riaUCllli 



VERMONT 



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'NTINGTON 





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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Shelf M-2l5\l\ 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



ERRATA. 



Page 26, 2nd line, read diverged from it. 

Page 44, 6th line, read their hearts. 

Page 52, 4th line, read instinctive, not in- 
structive. 

Page 52, last line, read with comma, not a full 
stop after itself. 

Page 66, 15th line, read homilectics. 

Page 74, 23rd line, read flowers, not flower. 

Page 168, 1st line, read till all these things. 

Page 143, 15th line, read correlated, not cor- 
relative. 

Page 176, 12th line, read faith, not face. 

Page 222, 19th line, read good and evil. 

Page 295, 3rd line, read comma after thought. 

Page 304, last line, read meet, not avert. 






THE /'*« , 

UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT 
Fifty Years Ago 



REV. C. A. HUNTINGTON 

Late Pastor of the First Congregational Church. Eureka, C 



A chapter from the unpublished reminiscences of otic of 
the oldest of surviving graduates, including brief 
mention of each member of the faculty with ex- 
tended reference to Prof. James Marsh, 
D. D'., the distinguished metaphysi- 
cian, followed by thirteen select 
sermons of the autln <r written 
in the kev of the Spir- 
itual Philosophy. 



WHITNEY & STANLEY 

- on ussruis to 
S. HUNTINGTON 

BU BLI N( ;T( )N, VERM< >XT 



'HOMAS HOWARD 

EUREKA, C'AL., 

1892 



Us 




3K 

PREFACE. 



The chapter composing this little vol- 
ume was originally introduced as an epi- 
sode into the personal reminiscences of 
the author to be accompanied by a larger 
selection of sermons on miscellaneous 
subjects. A class of readers to whom the 
subject matter of this chapter, by reason 
of its reference to the university, may he 
of interest, would be less likely to read 
the autobiography of one of her humblest 
graduates. I have„adopted the plan, there- 
fore^ of publishing by itself this tribute 
to the Faculty and Philosophy of the 
school in the time of my college life, to- 
gether with a few discourses suggestive of 
the influence of the Burlington Philoso- 
phy upon my own modes of thought in 
particular, and upon the settlement of 
theological questions in general. The 
appended discourses are written, confes- 
sedly not in a key note in harmony with 
the current theology fifty years ago. 



i 



The distrust, however, to which ' the 
spiritual philosophy gave rise then, in 
the churches and among the clergy, lias 
gradually abated, until doctrines which 
were then fifty years in advance of the 
age, are now accredited by thoughtful 
Christians, as the natural outcome of the 
word of God as it is revealed in Scripture 
and in the souls of men, both of which 
are believed to be media of Divine com- 
munication. 

To give emphasis to this leading 
thought of harmony between the written 
and subjective . spiritual revelation was 
the motive that prompted the writing of 
this humble tribute and the accompany- 
ing sermons. 



DEDICATION. 



To my children, to parishioners and friends 
who have appreciated my discourses and kindly 
requested their publication, is this volume re- 
spectfully dedicated by the author. 



b UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT FIFTY YEARS AGO. 

knowledgement of felt obligation to revere their 
names, honor their memory, and hear witness to 
their superior wisdom and unselfish devotion to 
the welfare of every pupil. 

My connection with the University brought me 
at once into personal relations with men of the 
highest attainments in scholarship, and of the 
loftiest motives in the work of education. Presi- 
dent John Wheeler, Professors James Marsh, 
Joseph Torrey, George W. Benedict, and Farrand 
X. Benedict, were men unrivaled in their time as 
disciplinarians in their respective departments of 
study. The system of education which these men 
organized, and which had its roots deep in the 
Platonic philosophy, for which the school was dis- 
tinguished, was felt by students as soon as they 
came under its influence, to be something more 
than a drill in mathematical problems and the 
idioms of ancient Greek and Latin. The ideas of 
these men were seen to rise at once beyond the 
recitations of the class room to the higher fields 
of spiritual truth, to which the preliminary drill 
is hut a passport. We were made to see that 
each step in the course, if well and truly taken, 
was a step of progress towards the ultimate solu- 
tion of the great problem of man and his relation 
to the infinite. We were made to realize some- 
thing of the true meaning of life, in the very 



UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT FIFTY TEARS A.GO. / 

outset, and were inspired to use the drill of each 
successive day, not as a stepping stone to some 
pecuniary advantage, but as a step upward to- 
ward the mastery of all truth and the full realiza- 
tion of the innate powers of our being. Before I 
had yet passed the first term of my Freshman 
year, the business of teaching was invested with 
a new meaning ; not by reason of my progress in 
algebra and herodotus, but by reason of my per- 
sonal contact with the men themselves whose 
every word and act indicated that while their 
feet were on the ground,' their heads were in the 
realms of the unseen, and that the material earth 
was but the scaffold that supported their bodies, 
while their minds were grappling with the great 
invisible law of things, powers of being, sources 
of life and eternal good. The personal influence 
of these men was more to me than all beside in 
my college life. For, as above intimated, 1 was 
necessarily interrupted more or less, all the way 
through, and suffered the loss of some of the im- 
portant studies - of the course. Yet I had rare 
opportunities to feel the power of the men them- 
selves, which, as Horace Bushnell says of paren- 
tal influence, " Was like a running stream bearing 
down upon me hour by hour," giving conscious 
form to my convictions and purposes, as from day 



8 UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT FIFTY YEARS AGO. 

to day I labored to meet the requirements of the 
class room. 

At this point I shall digress from the line of 
my narrative and speak briefly of the " person- 
nel " of the men then comprising the Faculty, to 
whom the University of Vermont owes whatever 
in its system of philosophy and methods of educa- 
tion distinguished it not only from other schools 
in Vermont, but from most of the colleges of the 
country. 

Besides the college officers named above, Pro- 
fessor Henry Chaney, an alumnus of the Univer- 
sity, was added to the Faculty during my fresh- 
man year. 

These six men were persons of strongly marked 
individuality, and of high moral convictions, as 
well as of critical scholarship, each in his special 
department, and all, generally, in things pertain- 
ing to the best educational discipline. 

President Wheeler was an executive officer of 
rare ability. Among men of affairs, no less than 
among men of culture, he was always at home. 
Sagacious in superintending matters of finance, 
he was at the same time alert in giving directions 
to the internal policy of the college under the ad- 
vice and counsel of the whole Faculty. He was 
a man of address, and whether on the platform or 
in the pulpit, he was equal to every emergency, 



UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT FIFTY YEARS AGO. y 

and could worthily represent the college, in its 
relation to the Church, the State, and the work 
of education in all subordinate grades. His tall 
and commanding person, his dignified yet affable 
intercourse with students, together with a happy 
faculty to inspire in them lofty aims in all their 
studies, conspired to make his personal influence 
over students extremely potent, even without 
much direct teaching in the class room, which 
duty for the most part devolved upon other mem- 
bers of the Faculty. 

In the person of George W. Benedict was seen 
the type of a pure, high souled, well poised man- 
hood, and of thorough, diversified, accomplished, 
scholarship. The substratum of his character, 
was a broad, comprehensive, practical common 
sense, to which were added the graces of a true 
Christian gentlemen, and a supreme regard for 
honest sincerity in all duty and all relations. As 
a teacher in natural science, there were few in his 
lifetime his superiors. But to this, his chosen 
department; his acquirements were by no means 
limited. When occasion required, he could re- 
lieve any of the other professors and instruct in 
the pure mathematics, in ancient and modern 
classics and belles-letters. He was a scholar in 
the truest sense of the term, which fact combined 
with his affable, paternal spirit, made him a 



10 UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT FIFTY YEARS AGO. 

teacher revered by all pupils whose hearts were 
capable of responding to unselfish, wisely intended 
endeavors in their behalf. He was every inch a 
man, a true cosmopolitan, at home everywhere, 
in business circles, in polite society, in the class 
room, in the lecture room, in the prayer meeting, 
among statesmen, authors and scholars; amid all 
surroundings he was nature's nobleman ; ami out 
of his genial nature there went an inspiration 
which cannot he described, but which every earn- 
est, faithful student could feel and could not 
forget. 

Professor Farrand X. Benedict was a mathe- 
matician, and as such, a factor in the educational 
system of the University quite indispensible. 
What he did not know in mathematics (accord- 
ing to a common saying) was not worth finding 
out. It was the law of hi- life to know every 
thing which lie studied a- perfectly as his author 
knew it. Whatsoever Euclid or Newton or Kep- 
ler, or any other of the great masters developed 
in mathematical truth, Farrand N. Benedict 
could teach. But Ids great usefulness as a col- 
lege officer, lay not so much in his far-reaching 
knowledge, which embraced 1i ilds of inquiry far 
beyond the limits of the college curriculum, as in 
t'ne thoroughness of his methods, and the patience 
of his drill, in the elementary subjects so funda- 



UNIVFKSITY OI-' VERMONT FIFTY Y KA US Alio. 11 

mental to all true progress, by reason of \he wide 
application of mathematical t<> .'ill other sciences. 
This habit of thoroughness and of unwearied 
patience on the part of the Professor, not only 
gave him a very high place in the esteem of all 
the other members of the Faculty, but endeared 
him to all pupils who yielded kindly to the rig- 
orous discipline of his method of instruction. 
Superficial methods in his department were fatal 
to all right progress in other subjects of knowl- 
edge. Against this Professor Benedict was an 
effectual guard. He aimed to send every student 
from his department well prepared to apply his 
knowledge in the acquisition of all the sciences 
of the course. 

Professor Chancy came in as an adjunct to the 
other professors. He was a man of all work in 
the educational hive. He could lead classes in 
algebra, in Latin, in mechanics, in optics, or in 
civil engineering. He was a good scholar, an ex- 
cellent man, and an important auxiliary, afford- 
ing much needed relief to other professors, and 
much valuable help to the classes in different 
parts of their course. 

No word of mine can add anything to the just 
fame of Professor Joseph Torrey, who for forty 
years was a bright and shining light in the Uni- 
versity. His name is familiar to scholars and 



12 UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT FIFTY YEARS AGO. 

theologians on both sides of the Atlantic, in 
whose libraries are found the works of Neander, 
the great church historian, which Dr. Torrey 
gave to the world in the English language, and 
without which no theological library can now be 
considered complete— but of course he was best 
known by those who came in daily contact with 
him in the relation of pupils. They better thafl 
Others could appreciate the characteristics <>t Ins 
mind. He was a model of accuracy in every 
thing, no less in the minute affairs and duties 
that fill up life, and in the aggregate determine 
character, than in the great questions of truth 
with which his mind was wont to grapple. 

His scholarship was not only accurate, but it 
was large and varied, more so, probably, than 
that of aify contemporary scholar in any Ameri- 
can college. He "drove more sciences abreast" 
than any other learned man of his time and 
country. He could read most of the languages 
of Europe. He was an expert in botany, anato- 
my, and physiology. His acquaintance with lit- 
erature was comprehensive and profound. Natu- 
rally, when a fund of *10,000 had been raised foj 
the purchase of a library for the University, he 
was chosen to go abroad and make the purchase. 
In the discharge of this commission he visited all 
the chief centers of learning, in Great Britain and 



UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT FIFTY YEARS AGO. 13 

on the continent, and succeeded in collecting out 
of all the best literary markets of the world, an 
aggregation, if books which George P. Marsh, in 
his speech on the floor of Congress some years 
later, when discussing the bill for accepting and 
appropriating the Smithsonian fund, declared to 
be superior in excellence to any other collection 
of like dimensions and like cost in the world. 
And the judgment of George P. Marsh was au- 
thority anywhere on such a subject. 

Professor Torrey occupied at first the chair of 
Latin and Greek, but for twenty-five of the later 
years of his life he adorned the chair of meta- 
physics. In whatever he taught he was an ora- 
cle of truth. And }'et he never got beyond the 
docility of a humble learner. To the day of his 
death he was always a laborious student, and 
neither in study nor in teaching did he limit 
himself to any one line of inquiry. In the Re- 
public of letters, in the schools of art, in the labo- 
ratory of nature, in the science of government, in 
the history of the church and of empires, and in 
the philosophy of mind and of morals, he was 
equally at home. His every habit as a scholar 
bore with authority upon the minds of his pupils 
the authority of absolute truth. It was prover- 
bial of him that he could teach more with fewer 
words than any other man. A bare hint or in- 



14 UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT FIFTY YEARS AGO. 

quiry calling attention to an inflection, a particle 
or verbal form, would disclose the source of 
error, the correction of which shed new light upon 
the meaning of a whole paragraph. This the stu- 
dent was left to discover himself without being 
told otherwise than by a bare suggestion. In 
matters of discipline he was dignified and re- 
served. It was usually enough to discover by a 
hint that Professor Torrey was displeased with 
our conduct. No self-respecting student would 
willingly and knowingly incur the displeasure of 
one in whose rectitude and wisdom all cherished 
such implicit confidence. He governed by what 
he was, more than by what he said or did. The 
whole tendency of his life and teachings was to 
make every student a law unto himself, and 
thereby reduce the college discipline to a regime 
of autonomy. 




THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 15 



DOCTOR MARSH 



SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY 



But the " esprit de corps " of the University of 
Vermont, that which gave significance to the 
term " Burlingtonian " applied as a cognomen to 
individuals of the Alumni, was not original with 
any of the men above referred to, nor was it the 
product of the united wisdom of all combined. 
They were all, without exception, superior men, 
and in their respective departments teachers 
without rivals. But they no less than their pu- 
pils were susceptible of impressions and subject 
to modifications in their mental conceptions un- 
der influences external to themselves, and con- 
sciously or unconsciously, they yielded to the 
silent force of a single philosophic mind that 



16 THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 

moulded them into unity of thought, and method 
in all the processes and aims of educational cul- 
ture. 

The presiding genius that gave impress and 
individuality to the scholarship of the Univer- 
sity, resided in the person of Dr. James Marsh. 
He was familiar with all the great leaders of 
thought, both ancient and modern. But it was 
not his Platonism, his Kantism. or his Colridg- 
ism, that made him the master spirit among his 
colleagues, or which gave tone to the discipline 
and mental achievements of his pupils. It was 
himself. So broad, so profound, so universal 
were his researches in all that relates to human 
thought, and to language the instrument of 
thought in every age, that he came to be more 
than a vehicle to convey the teachings of the 
great masters to other minds. Himself, like the 
great philosophers of antiquity, by inhaling for 
a life time the atmosphere of truth in the loftiest 
altitudes, became personally an oracle of truth, 
and shed around himself a light so clear and so 
commanding as to eclipse the light of all false 
philosophy. 

The influence of a great soul is best symbol- 
ized by the silent unseen forces of nature. It 
carries with it great minds, and small as the gulf 
stream floats the heaviest ships and the lightest 



THE SI'IIMTUAI 



fragments, all alike unconscious of the mighty 
current in whose power they arc ; the stream 
meanwhile, unconscious of its burden. The truly 
great man influences by what he is, as the sun 
influences by its spontaneous radiation. Some 
such the world has produced in every age, and 
such preeminently was the subject of this nar- 
rative. 

All who have read the memoir of Dr. Marsh 
prefixed to his literary remains by Professor Tor- 
rey, are prepared to justify my own estimate of 
the man. Such was my personal intimacy with 
him, however, while an inmate of his home, that 
I am able to add some things not mentioned by 
his biographer, which shed light on his superi- 
ority as a scholar and the way in which he gained 
that superiority. 

In the early part of his course, himself, Geo. P. 
Marsh, Joseph Torrey, and (if I remember right- 
ly) Rums Choate, formed a club, purchased the 
entire library of classic Greek and Latin, includ- 
ing everything that scholars consider of any 
value in classical literature, and set about read- 
ing it. 

All this they did independently of college re- 
quirements : outgrowing their tutors in classical 
knowledge, the Faculty early ceased to require 
their presence in recitations and consented to the 



18 THE SPIRITUAL I'HIUiSOl'HY. 

more enlarged and independent course prescribed 
by themselves. They persevered in the plan un- 
til their entire library was exhausted, and they 
had made themselves masters of Greek and Ro-. 
man literature. Thus they laid the foundation 
of their acknowledged preeminence in philology. 
This the Doctor related to me in no boastful 
spirit, but as an incentive to go beyond the re- 
quirements of the class room in my own classical 
study. This incident is alluded to as an index 
to the style of Ids scholarship. With him the 
knowledge of language was the condition indis- 
pensible to a knowledge of the soul, which is the 
beginning, the middle, and the end, of all true 
knowledge. Words are a transcript of the un- 
seen in man. the picture of the inner life of. the 
generations of the buried past. Hence philology 
with him was the key to all wisdom. Dr. Marsh 
made himself master of this key not as the end 
of study, hut as the instrument by which to open 
the sepulchres and hold converse with the wise of 
all times and all tongues. This is the point at 
which to begin the study of man. Language is 
the instrument of reason. Reason is the image 
of Cod. Philology is the avenue to anthropolo- 
gy, and anthropology the only gateway to the- 
ology. 

Whatever language could be made available as 



THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 1!) 

an instrument in unfolding the truth of philoso- 
phy, of that he made himself master. The mod- 
ern classics no less than the ancient, were 
brought into requisition as an avenue to all 
shades of German and French philosophy, en- 
abling him to bring to the light of truth the 
sophistries of modern transcendentalism, and the 
heresies of modern skepticism. 

The Platonic doctrine of innate ideas is the 
corner stone of the spiritual philosophy, which 
begins with the proposition that all truth is origi- 
nal in the supreme reason, is transcribed by the 
finger of God, and is innate in the human reason. 
The place to begin to know God is in the soul of 
man. Here is the starting point of all morality, 
of all duty, of all right. Morality is the same 
thing in every age. It did not originate with the 
Bible any more than the laws of geometry origi- 
nated with Euclid. He did not put his theories 
into the soul, he derived them from it. The writ- 
ers of the Bible did not put law into the soul of 
man. They first studied the law revealed in their 
own conscious being antecedent to all written 
law, and from thence transcribed it on parch- 
ment. 

Hence the genius of Dr. Marsh's philosophy 
like that of the ancient philosophers was intro- 
spective, the turning of the mind inward upon 



20 THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 

itself, "to know thyself," as the first condition of 
knowing Him of whom " thyself" is the image. 

This aphorism was made the corner stone of 
the educational system of the University of Ver- 
mont. That system began in the knowledge of 
the soul itself, which was not regarded as a blank 
sheet, or as an empty receptacle to be filled from 
without ; but as in the acorn the germ of the oak 
is innate, so the soul is pregnant with the germs 
of all truth, and the business of education is not 
to pour in from without but to educe from with- 
in, and to evolve the full grown man in all the 
symmetry and grace of character. 

What Dr. Marsh was to the school as a teacher 
of spiritual philosophy, he desired to be to the 
theology of Vermont as a teacher of spiritual reli- 
gion. The issue between the current theology of 
his time and his teachings, was as strongly 
marked as the issue between the utilitarian phil- 
osophy of John Locke and the spiritual philoso- 
phy of Immanuel Kant. 

On this subject, however, he holds the following 
language in his preliminary essay to Colridge'fl 
" Aids to Reflection :" 

" It will not follow that our religion is necessa- 
rily wrong, or our essential faith erroneous, but 
that the philosophical grounds on which we are 
accustomed to defend our faith are unsafe, mid 



THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 2] 

that their natural tendency is to error. If the 
spirit of the gospel still exert its influence, if a 
truly spiritual religion be maintained, it is in 
opposition to our philosophy (meaning the cur- 
rent empirical philosophy), and not at all by its 
aid. 

"Neither reason nor experience, indeed, fur- 
nished any ground for believing that the living 
and life giving power of the Divine word has ever 
derived any portion of its efficacy in the conver- 
sion of the heart to God from the forms of meta- 
physical theology with which the human under- 
standing has invested it." 

His claim was that evangelical religion, if it 
flourished at all (which he docs not question), 
flourished not by the help of the current philoso- 
phy but in spite of it. To understand Dr. Marsh's 
attitude, it is first necessary to know the distinc- 
tion between the different schools of philosophy — 
their antropology is different. Man is a different 
being under the different systems. One school 
makes him to be the creature of circumstances. 
He is what he is by reason of forces external to 
himself. Hence it is called the Empirical School, 
because ideas come to him from without through 
the experience of the senses. 

It is called the Natural School, because it 
teaches that man, like the lower animals, is a 



THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 



subject of natural law. He is what nature causes 
him to be. He is a link in the chain of natural 
cause and effect, a creature of necessity— not a 
self-determining agent. 

It is called the Material School, because it 
ignores the supernatural in man, ignores any 
Divine element in him other than understanding 
which is common to men and animals, and which 
is limited in its exercise to visible phenomena. If 
it employ the term reason, it confounds its mean- 
ing with that of instinct, which, whether in men 
or animals, can but contrive, compare, forecast 
and pre-arrange with reference to material things, 
while it points to the statute book for conscience, 
and waits for a school-master to lay down rules 
of right and wrong. 

It is called the Utilitarian School, because it 
measures all human conduct, not by any inher- 
ent principle of action, but exclusively by its 
utilities, by its outcome on personal pleasure, or 
social happiness, or the general welfare. It 
makes no account of the spiritual motives of the 
soul, but in the light of the understanding judges 
of the merit or the demerit of conduct wholly by 
its utilities. Whatever eventuates in happiness, 
in advantage to the individual, to the church, to 
the State, is approved as right because of its re- 
sult, regardless of the underlying motive of the 



THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 2o 

act — or rather the underlying motive appears to 
the understanding from what is seen in the ex- 
ternal result. 

The original projector of this Utilitarian School 
of thought was John Locke, whose philosophical 
conceptions gave mold and flavor to the theology 
of Doctor Paley. Both of these men were ac- 
credited as leaders of the religious mind in Eng- 
land, Scotland, and the United States during the 
eighteenth and the early part of the present cen- 
tury, which religious mind took on modified 
shades of opinion under Bentham, Hartley, 
Hobbes, Hume and John Stuart Mill, all of 
whom, like the several children of the same 
family, owe their paternity to the same progeni- 
tor, but bear complexions, much modified in ap- 
pearance, without obscuring their family origin. 
The inevitable outcome of the philosophy of 
Locke, when carried to its logical conclusion, is 
atheism as taught by David Hume, and materi- 
alism as taught by Spinoza and the pantheistic 
school of which he was the acknowledged head. 

Respecting the relation which the metaphysics 
of Locke bore to spiritual religion, Dr. Shedd, in 
his history of Christian doctrine, volume 1, page 
94, speaks thus : 

" The English and American theologies of the 
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have felt the 



24 THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 

influence of the Locke philosophy in the modified 
form of the Scotch school, while the earnest and 
practical religious spirit which has characterized 
these churches has tended to neutralize the ma- 
terializing elements that still remain in it." 

Still, as Dr. Marsh declared, true spiritual reli- 
gion owed nothing to the philosophy of Locke or 
to the theology of Paley. If it flourished at all, 
it flourished in spite of their teachings, in spite 
of all the false, unreasonable and unscriptural 
conceptions that have their roots in a factitious 
anthropology which ignores the fundamental con- 
dition of humanity, viz: the autonomy of the 
will, and makes man the passive victim of neces- 
sity—clay in the hands of the molder— a sinner, 
not by the independent volition of his spiritual 
freedom, but because 

" Our mother took the poison there 
And tainted all her blood." 
It makes him to be saved, because Divine sover- 
eignty chose him to salvation, or lost, because 
such was the necessity caused by a power exter- 
nal to himself. 

But the Burlington philosophy, of which Dr. 
Marsh was the living exponent, begins in a dif- 
ferent anthropology, and eventuates in a differ- 
ent interpretation of man's moral relations, and 
of God's written and unwritten communications. 



THE BPIR] TU Al, PHILOSOPHY. 25 

First, thou, what do I mean by the different an- 
thropology of that which is known as the spir- 
itual school? That anthropology recognizes man 
as a Divine being, differing from the Supreme 
being, only as a drop of salt water differs from 
the mighty ocean, the same in essence, compre- 
hending in miniature all the attributes of divini- 
ty. God breathed his own divinity into the nos- 
trils of Adam, and he became a living soul in the 
image of God. Himself in-breathes his own at- 
tributes of reason, conscience, free will, into every 
child of the race. Thus, while as sensuous crea- 
tures, we are as beasts having instinct or under- 
standing to guide us in our materia] relations, we 
are at the same time endowed with reason to 
guide, us in our spiritual relations, which, like 
the Supreme reason, makes us morally indepen- 
dent, and therefore, morally responsible. I can- 
not more directly reach this important distinc- 
tion than by quoting the following paragraph by 
John Tullock in reference to Golridge's spiritual 
philosophy: 

"The really vital question is, whether there is 
a Divine root in man — a spiritual center answer- 
ing to a higher spiritual center in the universe. 
All controversies of any importance come back to 
this. Colridge would have been a great Chris- 
tian thinker if for no other reason than this, that 



gg THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 

he brought all theological problems back to this 
living center, and showed how they diverged it. 
Apart from this postulate, sin was inconceivable 
to him ; and in the same manner all Bin was to 
him sin of origin, or ' original sin.' It is the 
essential property of the will that it can origi- 
nate The phrase ' original sin ' is therefore a 
pleonasm. If sin were not original, or from 
within the will its.lf, it would not deserve the 
name A state or act that has not its origin m 
the will may be a calamity, deformity, disease <»r 
mischief ; but a sin it cannot be." 

The above quotation is very nearly in the ex- 
art language used by Dr. Marsh before his classes 
more than fifty years ago. The fault he found 
with the current theology was, that it ignored the 
- Divine root in man" and asserted its theological 
dogmas without any reference to a subjective 
Standard of judgment residing in human reason. 
They were true because the Bible (often ol doubt- 
ful interpretation), asserted them, or they were 
true as propositions of an authorized creed. Rea- 
son had nothing to do with them. Christian 
truth, it was supposed, lay at hand in the Bible, 
an appeal to which settled everything, and it was 
little less than heresy to ascribe authority to the 
ant cedent revelations of reason. 

And this accords precisely with the method ol 



THK SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPflY. 27 

the Bible. The Bible nowhere presupposes man's 
ignorance of the truth which it discusses. It 
never argues the being of God with men. The 
very first verse in the Bible assumes that the be- 
ing of God is an "apriori" truth and belongs 
originally to the reason of man. 

The fact of human sinfulness is not true be- 
cause the Bible asserts it. It is a fact of con- 
sciousness — coeval with transgression — and for 
that reason is written in the Bible. The Bible pre- 
scribes the remedy, but the fact is known to rea- 
son without the Bible. The freedom of the will 
is nowhere inculcated in the Bible, but every- 
where assumed as an axiomatic truth. Man does 
not learn it from the Bible nor from any other 
source external to himself. Every man knows 
without being told that he alone is responsible 
for his actions. When God says, "come now let 
us reason together, though your sins be as scarlet, 
they shall be as white as snow," he invites roan 
to the highest vantage ground possible and pro- 
poses for him the only remedy. He does not put 
him to school to learn any lessons in theology. 
He does not tell him to offer sacrifices to multi- 
ply prayers, or give alms, but he says, "come 
now let us reason together." Give reason its 
sway, act rationally, as you know you ought to 



2 g THE SPIRITUAL PHIIiOSOPHY. 

act. Obey the truth as revealed in the soul be- 
fore it is written in the Bible. 

Would we know the mind of God toward us, 
would we know our own moral maledy, and learn 
the remedy, we must first know ourselves, for 
only by the study of ourselves can we know God 
in whose image we are made. This was the wis- 
dom of the great philosophers of antiquity— of the 
Great Teacher himself— who made all his appeals 
to the human conscience as the ground of highest 
authority, and of the Apostle Paul who found a 
law in his mind ever erect and firm against the 
law of sin in his members. 

But this was not the method of the Evangelical 
School in Dr. Marsh's day, nor of some in our 
own dav. Theologians began at the other end of 
the great chapter of Divine truth. They treated 
the human soul, that Divine entity, equipped 
With the very prerogatives and powers of the Su- 
preme reason, as an empty casket to be tilled up 
from without, as we pour water from one pitcher 
into another that is empty, instead of courting 
the free exercise of the soul's God-given attri- 
butes, saying, "come now let us reason together," 
let us' weigh well the Divine instincts within our- 
selves, and draw out of the deep well of truth 
therein abiding the living waters that spring up 
into everlasting life. Instead of this, they 



THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY, -It 

crammed the soul with the crude notions of hu- 
man schools, doctrines and dogmas, the wisdom 
of man's device. The result is, that truth, which 
is a unit, and which is revealed alike to all souls, 
is divided against itself. And the Gospel, which 
ought to be, and in order to its proper mission 
must be, a Divine diapason of loving harmony, is 
rent by discord, and becomes the grating jargon 
of parties and sects in disagreement. 

And this all results from a false conception of 
the being of man, and a false idea of the objects 
of revelation. It is assumed that the Bible is. 
given to educate man religiously, and so it is. 
But to educate, as before asserted, does not mean 
to pour ideas into an empty receptacle, but to 
draw out those that are innate, as the heat, mois- 
ture, and fertilized soil draw out the embryo 
germ innate in the acorn. The Bible is given 
like the powers of nature. It is not a vehicle to 
bring to man the lumber out of which to build 
creeds, or the stuff with which to cram an empty 
soul, and fill it with dogmas and notions and 
ritualistic forms. The Bible is not given to re- 
port the being of God, or tell man of sin, of retri- 
bution, of holiness and spiritual peace, in which 
are involved the full meaning of heaven and hell. 
The Bible was given to stir up, to stimulate, and 
quicken into living consciousness, these heaven 



30 THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 

descended realities, which belong to the soul as 
its original furniture derived from the Supreme 
reason, and which made it to be in the image of 
God. 

But theologians go to the Bible first assuming 
that to be the starting point of truth, and out of 
the literal terms of the written word cull material 
with which to construct their self-projected sys- 
tems of trinity and unity; of universal atone- 
ment and limited atonement; of the divinity of 
the Savior and the humanity of the Savior; of 
necessity and free will; of bodily resurrection 
and spiritual resurrection; of a second advent in 
the flesh yet to come, and of a second advent in 
the spirit already fulfilled; of plenary verbal in- 
spiration, and of inspiration of meaning expressed 
in human words, which conform each w liter's 
statements to his own characteristic style; of 
apostolic succession, and of no succession, and 
many other dogmas which, however paradoxical 
are all provable by scripture of which there is 
much on one side as on the other.' 

And yet the Bible is a unit when studied 
the light of reason. Its spiritual meaning is to 
be determined not by the dictionary. Tried by 
that test, there are almost no contradictory no- 
tions that cannot be proven by it, But tried by 
the subjective rules of reason, all differences har- 



is as 



in 



THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 31 

monize, and the church universal becomes one in 
Christ Jesus on all points of truth relating to 
spiritual religion. See now if this is not so. 

All Christians believe in God, the one holy 
Almighty Creator and Judge. That is a doctrine 
of reason, and so far all agree. All Christian* 
believe in the doctrine of sin and the necessity of 
atonement and reconciliation. This is a doctrine 
of reason, a doctrine universally known, whether 
or not a written revelation be known. In this, 
Christians the world over, Catholic and Protes- 
tant of all denominations, are of one mind. .Ml 
Christians believe in retribution, in God's dis- 
pleasure at sin, and his complacency in holiness. 
This is a doctrine of reason, and so far all are 
agreed. All Christians believe in the golden rule. 
This is a doctrine of reason, " apriori " in the 
.soul, an eternal unchangeable law in which a'll 
agree. These are the only doctrines that will cut 
any figure in the day of judgment. These are all 
revealed in the soul. And the Bible, so far as it 
is the text-book of spiritual religion, interpreted 
in the light of reason, reveals nothing else. 

Did Dr. Marsh's philosophy seem to underrate 
the Divine oracles? God forbid. What he dep- 
recated was the theological tyranny that insists 
on the enforcement of arbitrary mechanical sys- 
tems of doctrine against which all reason revolts; 



32 THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 

systems that ignore the fundamental grounds of 
spiritual truth, and in the light of a factitious 
philosophy literalize, materialize, and pervert all 
the glorious imagery of the Bible which reason 
employs as the signs of great spiritual realities. 
•What he maintained, was that reason and reve- 
lation were each of Divine origin, and that the 
latter cannot be rightly understood without rev- 
erent respect to the former. When that is con- 
ceded the word of God will be found consistent 
with itself and in harmony with reason. And 
then the discords that now distract and disinte- 
grate the church will be turned into harmony, 
and religion pure and undefiled will liquify the 
church militant, and recast her into the mold of 
the church triumphant, whose celestial choir 
sings in the same key for ever and ever. 

Dr. Marsh was a great moralist, but no contro- 
vertialist. His method in ethical discussion was 
to state fairly both sides of a proposition, and, by 
concentrating upon the wrong side the light of 
true philosophy to dissolve the error as by the 
power of a sun-glass, finding it easier to dispel 
the shadow by pouring in light than by cutting 
down the tree that projected the shadow. 

His bearing was always so modest, and his 
spirit so Christ-like, that the antagonism to 



THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. • >■> 

which controversalists are usually exposed was 
greatly disarmed. 

And by so much as this was true, the system 
of ideas which he taught found more easy access 
to the minds of even the most ultra of the Utili- 
tarian School. As a theologian, Dr.Marsh never 
attempted to formulate a religious erred, but as 
a metaphysician, he aimed to unfold the deep 
foundations of truth abiding in the inner con- 
sciousness on which the laws of rational interpre- 
tation rest, and leave 1 his pupils to frame their 
own creed in the light of the truth so manifested. 
The church of his day was the victim of preju- 
dice, crystallized into the unreasoning dogmas of 
a, material, utilitarian philosophy, of the demor- 
alizing effect of which a filial disciple of Dr. 
Marsh, on presenting a memorial tablet to the 
University with which to adorn its new chapel 
and bespeak his own and the hive of all his dis- 
ciples, speaks thus: 

"in Dr. Marsh were happily combined the pro- 
found and universal scholar, and the earnest 
and devout Christian, philosopher, lie did a 
great and memorable work in introducing the 
intuitive or spiritual philosophy, so called, to the 
young men of our country of forty and fifty years 
ago, in an age notable for the prevalence in the 
popular mind, in the lycenm, in pulpit, press, and 



34 .THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 

halls of learning, of a philosophy, sensuous and 
utilitarian, false and demoralizing, and in its 
.teachings, largely in fact, though not always in 
form', name, and purpose— anti-Christian. 

" In this great work of restoring the sublime 
philosophy of Plato, of Cud worth and Hooker, of 
Bacon and Milton and Leighton, and of the pro- 
found and majestic John Howe, to its ancient and 
appropriate place in the university curriculum, 
and to the no less task of exposing and refuting 
the errors, sophistries and absurdities of this 
sterile and debasing philosophy that everywhere 
dominated the public mind, Dr. Marsh found a 
congenial field of labor, and one into which he 
was eminently fitted to enter, by Ids mental and 
moral structure, by previous study and research, 
and bv his wide and profound scholarship. 

" But this great and characteristic life-work was 
undertaken in the face of many adverse circum- 
stances sufficient to have intimidated a man of 
less clear and discriminating insight, and of less 
positive convictions. 

"Through persistent writing and teaching; 
through the unconscious power of bis personal 
contact; through his unsurpassed facility in in- 
spiring young men in quest of light and truth. 
with an irrepressible enthusiasm in the pursuit 
and acquisition of knowledge, Dr. Marsh initiated 



THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 35 

the great revolution in this barren and subversive 
philosophy everywhere prevalent, but all this at 
the peril of forfeiting the confidence of many of 
the great and good men of his time, and of sacri- 
ficing his position in the church and in the uni- 
versity, which revolution has since reached many 
of our institutions of high learning, and has 
manifested itself in an eminent degree in much 
of the better and sounder scholarship, theology 
and literature of the age."* 

To have projected a formal (.-reed then in the 
light of the spiritual philosophy, and to have at- 
tempted to substitute it in place of the creed then 
in vogue in the churches would have been to take 
a step fifty years in advance of his time, for 
which the church was not prepared. It was more 
than the church could patiently bear for him to 
project into the theological discussions of his time 
the aids to reflection, and by his preliminary 
essay, endorse the Christian philosophy of Sam- 
uel Taylor Colridge. 

The most that he attempted in all this was to 
awaken reflection on the deepest principles that 
underlie all truth, and leave the minds so awak- 
ened to formulate doctrine in accord with en- 
lightened reason. With him creeds were one 

*Ad(lress of Hon. William P. Pinson of class 1839 to the Board of 
Trustees on presentation of the Marsh tablet in 1883, 



30 



THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY, 



thing and religion quite another thing. The one 
the " letter that killeth, the other the spirit 



was 



that giveth life." < 

In his teachings Dr. Marsh never raised any oj 
the questions more recently mooted by what ifi 
called the higher criticism, such as plenary in, 
spiration, chronological, historical or scientific 
errancy; he believed with Job that " there is a 
spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty 
giveth knowledge." To get into the mind ot hie 
pupils the great thought involved in this aphor- 
ism was the point at which he aimed as the " sine 
qua non" of biblical knowledge. The truth re- 
vealed" objectively on parchment is Erst revealed 
subjectively in the spirit, and the objective writ* 
ten'revelation can be understood only in the light 
of the subjective spiritual revelation, 

•' [ will put my law in their inward parts and 
write it in their hearts, and will he their God, 
and they shall be my people," saith the Lord. 
(Jer xxxi, 33.) Anthropology was with him 
the first step in the mastery of truth. To unfold 
m m to himself was the lofty climax to which ho 
aspired. "Know thyself." This was the end o| 
all acquirements, the glorious acme of all lean** 
in. To answer the ever unsilenced whispers of 
the soul, asking, what am I? From w Leno 
T? and whither do 1 tend? This mysterious, mi- 



THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 37 

seen, intangible something within me, thai rea- 
sons, that loves, that hates and aspires, that 
longs, and refuses to die. Am I to be or not to 
be, when the seen and tangible is sloughed off? 
Am I to shine or be snuffed out as a candle is ex- 
tinguished? Whence the sanctions of the unseen 
court within me that tries me every hour, that 
dooms me or acquits me, that lashes me with re- 
morse, or beatifies me with smiles of approval? 
Whence and what am I and whither am I hound? 
To answer these yearnings of the soul Dr. Marsh 
laid under contribution everything knowable in 
history, in nature, and philosophy.. 

' The result of all which, inquiries was to confirm 
the inherent convictions of the soul, man is a 
spirit as truly as God is a sj>irit. For a limited 
period lying between the cradle and the grave, 
he resides in a sentient body, corresponding to 
that of the animals. But the sentient body is not 
the I; not the personality; not the man any more 
than the material cosmos is God. God is a spirit 
apart from and independent of matter. Man 
who is declared to be in his image is in the same 
sense a spirit. The spiritual philosophy deter- 
mines the antecedent of the pronoun I when man 
speaks of his true self. It is spirit; it is super- 
natural; it is self-asserting, independent, and 
hence absolutely and unconditionally responsi- 



33 THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 

ble. It is entirely out of the chain of natural 
cause and effect, so that nothing divine or human 
can necessitate its action, save its own responsi- 
ble will in which all its moral volitions originate. 
By this it is not meant that causes external to 
man cannot influence him. It is meant that no 
power external to man can compel his spiritual 
volitions, otherwise moral responsibility is incon- 
ceivable, and choice is a misnomer. 

Not so with the material philosophy which 
makes man a creature of necessity. He knows, 
and thinks, and wills only as he is acted upon by 
forces and phenomena external to himself. His 
sinful nature is inherited and is the result of a 
cause over which he has no control. His under- 
standing, which is common to men and to ani- 
mals, the channel through which the beast knows, 
is the only channel of knowledge which the ma- 
terialist recognizes. He uses the term reason, 
which belongs exclusively to spirit, indiscrimin- 
ately with understanding the faculty of sense, 
which is common both to men and animals, and 
thereby confounds the most fundamental distinc- 
tion in philosophy. One dog is more knowing 
than another dos; one man is more knowing than 
another man. But the channel of knowledge 
(the functions of sense and the impressions of 
external phenomena), is the same to both— both 



THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 39 

have understanding — and if this were all, death 
would end all with the man as with his dug. But 
this is not all. God breathed into man's nostrils 
and he became a living soul. This is not said of 
any other form of life. Man alone, of all the 
creatures he had made, was endowed with that 
Divine thing called soul, which in form, essence 
and attribute, is like God. The spiritual phil- 
osophy takes it entirely out of nature and recog- 
nizes its equipment with all the qualities of the 
Supreme reason, which qualities distinguish us 
from the bruits that perish, are the image of God 
in us and constitute our proper humanity. Thus 
equipped, Dr. Marsh adopts as his own, the sen- 
timent of Colridge expressed as follows: 

" Reason and philosophy ought to prevent our 
reception of doctrines claiming the authority of 
revelation only so far as the very necessities of 
our rational being require. If it contradict rea- 
son we cannot believe it, but must conclude 
either that the writing is not of Divine authority 
or that the language has been misinterpreted." 

Dr. Marsh accepted Jesus Christ as the living 
revelation of God to men. He is a living, walk- 
ing, speaking bible. He is the word, " which was 
in the beginning with God and which was God. 
In him was light which lighteth every man " 
(not wilfully blindfold), " and in him is no dark- 



40 THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 

ness at all." He is the manifestation to the 
world of the Supreme reason. All other mani- 
festations of God are more or less imperfect, as 
the vehicle is imperfect, Language is a human 
instrument. Nobody pretends that language is 
an infallible vehicle of thought, however infalli- 
ble the thought itself. At best it is a clumsy car- 
riage, ever and anon undergoing revision and yet 
never perfect. But Jesus the living word, the 
Divine manifestation no sacrilegious hand ever 
attempts to revise. And whatever in the written 
revelation is contrary to the Supreme reason as 
revealed in him cannot be received as of Divine 
authority. If it seem to contradict Christ either 
in letter or spirit it must be uninspired of God or 
misunderstood of men. The symbolic language 
of the Bible employed as the vehicle of spiritual 
truth, if literalized and materialized, is often 
wrested from its true meaning and martialed un- 
der a thus, '• saith the Lord," into the support of 
doctrines contradictory in themselves and ab- 
horrent to the spirit of the sermon on the mount, 
That is the standard by which all sectarian creeds, 
and all theological dogmas must be tried. When 
the five points of Calvinism find quarter in the 
teachings of Christ himself, then, and not till 
then, let them claim Divine authority, however 
strongly they seem to be fortified by the literal 



'NIK SPIRITUAL I'lllUisolMI Y, 



phraseology of the inspired writers. To say that 
the dogmas are revealed and must be believed, 
however reason revolts at them, and however 
wide their departure from the words and wisdom 
of Christ is to expose the impassible gulf between 
the two great schools of thought of which the 
University of Vermont in Dr. Marsh's time was 
the exponent on one side, and the hyper c'alvin- 
ists of that period were the exponents on the 
other. 

The classes in the University of Vermont have 
never been large in number, and most of those in 
his day were small. But some of every class 
drank in the spirit of the great Master, and went 
forth to reflect the light that he infused into their 
minds, and to be men of mark in whatever call- 
ing they labored, whether in the department of 
letters, of law, of science, or theology. And the 
few of us now on the stage, who lived in his day, 
can compare the theological thought then pre- 
dominant with that of the present time, and can 
appreciate the results of Dr. Marsh's metaphysics 
in tempering the tone of the American pulpit, 
conforming it with reason, and by so much elimi- 
nating from our religious life the grating discords 
once the lament of the saints and the stumbling 
block of sinners. 

That there has been progress in the direction 



42 THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 

of more rational modes of thought, and toward 
the simpler and more .spiritual formulas of the 
Apostolic church and of the great reformers, is 
abundantly obvious. Yet religion, pure and un- 
defile'd, never changes. It is the same " yester- 
day, to-day and forever.'' When we speak of 
progress of religious thought, we do not mean 
that conscience, hi'L' will, reason, the essential 
constituents of our humanity change; they are 
the same in all generations. The Divine spirit 
hears witness with our spirit that we are the chil- 
dren of God, however heavy the theological bur- 
dens that men lay upon our shoulders. Religion 
is one thing, and formulated theories are quite 
another thing. That our fathers were less loyal 
to God than their children, filial love forbids us 
to think. We revere their piety, while we decline 
the dogmatic burdens which they so patiently 
anl so conscientiously bore. Their religion was 
pure and undefiled in spite of the irrational phil- 
osophy with which it was invested. 

The doctrine of the resurrection was to them 
no less than to us a great spiritual reality. It 
meant immortality and eternal life of the disem- 
bodied soul in spite of the materialism of their 
oreed that loaded the pure spirit down with dead 
men's hones and all the uncleanness of the tomb. 

The doctrine of the second coming of the Son 



THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY, 43 

of man and of the general judgment was no less 
spiritually true and real to them, looking at it as 
they did through the telescope of a material phil- 
osophy which projected the whole drama as a 
phenomenon of sense to he realized in the date- 
less future "when time shall be no longer," than 
to us who realize that the promise of the coming 
of the Son of man is fulfilled already, and that 
the judgment seat of God is within the human 
soul, and that as soon as "the dust returns to 
the earth as it was, the spirit returns to God who 
gave it," who will then bring every work into 
judgment. 

They were no less loyal and loving to God, 
" who so loved the world that he gave his only 
begotten and well beloved Son " to redeem it, be- 
cause taught that Adam, by eating the forbidden 
fruit necessitated the fact, than we who believe 
that we all sin as Adam did, not because he 
sinned, but by the voluntary act of our own free 
will, and hence ourselves alone are responsible. 
They were no less reverent to God because their 
theology failed to teach them that to God there 
is no futurity; that He is independent of all re- 
lations of time; that He lives in an eternal pres- 
ent; and that what is future to us is historical to 
Him; and, failing of this, taught them that God 
prearranged and necessitated from eternity all 



44 THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 

events in nature and all volitions of men, a doe- 
trine abhorrent to reason and now obsolete from 
the deliverances of the pulpit, though not yet ex- 
punged from the formulas of some of the creeds. 

Heaven was no less the desire, and hell no less 
the dread of the hearts, because brought to their 
apprehension through material conceptions which 
converted the sign into the tiling signified, than 
to us to whom all the sensible imagery of scrip- 
ture relating to these great realities is but the ex- 
ternal symbol of internal spiritual verities. 

The old religion, spiritual in itself, which wor- 
ships in spirit and in truth, is the same in every 
age; and when we speak of the progress of reli- 
gion, we do not mean that it changes, hut that it 
sloughs off the heavy burdens that men hind and 
lay on its shoulders. It castaway the ritualism 
of the old dispensation, and in so <loin^. escaped 
the traditions and doctrines of men that it might 
he more free to worship Him .vho is a spirit in 
spirit and in truth. 

It east off the ecclesiastical burdens of the 
l'anacy and all the gross materialism of the mid- 
dle ages, when the reformers, under penalty of 
persecution, and amid the fires of the stake, reas- 
serted that spiritual freedom with which Christ 
makes free. 

And in these later times it is leaving behind in 



THE SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY. 45 

its spiritual progress the theological burdens of a 
material, sensuous philosophy, and is coming 
back to the same spiritual standard that formed 
the stability of the Apostolic church, while the 
traditions and dogmas of men, with which the 
gospel ship has been so long burdened, if not 
thrown overboard, are out of sight. 

That the incipient step in this blesse 1 consum- 
mation was taken by Dr. James Marsh, when 
through his preliminary essay, he called the at- 
tention of scholars in this country to Colridge's 
"Aids to Reflection," no well informed man now 
doubts. 

And though he died in his early prime, before 
time was allowed him to mature the well digested 
plan of his metaphysical labors and give the re- 
sults to the world in completed form, yet who can 
fail to see the far-reaching influence of his short 
and humble life in revolutionizing the theological 
mind of this country and giving it a tendency to- 
ward a more rational and a more spiritual con- 
ception of Divine truth. 

His pupils have been " living epistles " of the 
truth that he taught, " known and read of all 
men " within their sphere, and some of them have 
risen to the highest seats of learning and of con- 
trol in the empire of mind and of morals. Through 
them the life work which he could not finish for 



(6 



rHK sl'IRITUAL 



lack of years has been carried on until success 
has crowned a monument to his memory that 
will outlast all that is material and visible, being 
built on the abiding foundation of tilings not seen 
and eternal. 

I append the following discourses selected from 
a great number of manuscript sermons, the accu- 
mulation of years of pastoral labor, for the espe- 
cial purpose of emphasizing and elucidating the 
foregoing reflections. 

It is when we come to the interpretation of 
scripture, which is the voice of the Divine to the 
human spirit, that the spiritual philosophy be- 
comes to us a light indispensible to the acquisi- 
tion of its true meaning. 



fes* ^ 



INTERNAL AUTHORITY. 47 



THE 

AUTHORITY OF TRUTH 

FOUND IN THE HUMAN SOUL. 



And it came to pass when Jesus had ended these say- 
ings, that the people were astonished at his doctrine. 
For He taught them as one having authority and not as 
the Scribes.— Matthew VII; 28 and 29; 

It is the instinct of mind to require authority. 
Sayings of any sort, whether they be propositions 
or fact, or of philosophy, to be believed must be 
supported by some sort of authority. 

There are two kinds of authority by which 
truth is supported, viz: External and internal. 
Questions of fact, principles of science, laws of 



48 



INTERNAL AUTHORITY. 



economy, knowledge of things in general effect 
the minds of men according to the weight of ex- 
ternal evidence by which they are supported 
Questions of moral right and duty are enforced 
by authority internal to the mind itself. The 
law that says thou shalt not kill is binding, not 
only because God proclaimed it openly; it is 
binding by a law internal to the mind; the au- 
thority that enforces the law is within the man 
himself God transcribed the formula from His 
own mind and gave it to Moses, but man made 
in the image of God, had the law written in his 
heart independent of the formula. It was in 
man, as it was in God, before it was written on 
stone. Hence the written formula finds its au- 
thority no less in the convictions of men than m 
the behest of God. 

Jesus spake with authority, and not as the 
Scribes. As much as to say the Scribes had no 
authority. Externally the Scribes were sup- 
ported bv an array of highest authority. The 
letter of the law, the traditions of the elders, the 
authority of the government, the wisdom of the 
schools, the power of the priesthood, and the pre- 
cedents of the church, all combined to reinforce 
the authority of the Scribes. And yet it is said 
that Jesus, an obscure man, without preBtige and 
without precedent, who said to the people, "ex- 



[NTERNAL AUTHORITY. 41) 

cept your righteousness exceed the righteousness 
of the Scribes and Pharisees," exceed the right- 
eousness of these your spiritual guides and teach- 
ers, " ye can in no case enter into the Kingdom 
of Heaven." Tims assailing the Scribes lie spake 
with authority, insomuch that the people were 
astonished at His doctrine. He brought no proof 
in support of any of His sayings; He quoted no 
authorities; He introduced no evidence; He be- 
labored the people with none of the logic of an- 
alogy or of argument, but announced doctrines 
contradictory to the Scribes, and in the face of 
all the authority by which they were supported, 
and at the same time overwhelmed the people 
because lie spake as one having authority, and 
not as the Scribes. 

A question of chief importance with the 
preacher is this: What was the ground of 
Christ's authority? It does not answer this ques- 
tion, to say that He was a Divine being, that He 
spake as never man spake, and as man cannot 
speak, and that on this account His "ipsedixit " 
carried weight with it, which the truth coming 
from the lips of any other man could not carry. 
Jesus never enforced His doctrines on the ground 
of His own divinity. In all of His teachings He 
respected the laws of mind the same as any wise 
human teacher must do. He did not claim for 



50 INTERNAL AUTHORITY. 

the truth He taught, sanctions of authority be- 
cause He spoke it, or because God commanded it; 
but because it was true, and the evidence by 
which He convinced His hearers, He found not 
in external proof but in the mind of the hearer 

himself. 

I set out then with this proposition, that truth 
is the absolute and ultimate ground of all au- 
thority, and that moral truth, such truth as ad- 
dresses itself to the moral convictions of men. 
must find its evidence in the mind itself, in the 
response it awakens in those convictions. 

In lexicography, in law, in government, in his- 
tory, in all science, there are standards of authori- 
ty On wliat do those standards rest? 
" In lexicography Worcester and Webster make 
the law respecting the sound and sense of Eng- 
lish words not arbitrarily by their own "ipse- 
dixit" They are a •credited as authority only 
because by a lifetime of philological study they 
have come to know more of the history of words 
and the truth of their meaning than other men. 
Judge Blackstone is authority in the common 
law of England onlv because he has drank deeper 
ut the fountains of legal truth than other men. 

The decisions of courts and the opinions of 
statesmen become crystallized into precedents and 
govern the action of future courts and legisla- 



INTERNAL AUTHORITY. h] 

tures, only because they are supposed to be 
founded in truth. No array of great names can 
give authority to precedents further than they 
come to us clothed with the panoply of truth. 
Neither crowns, nor courts, nor legislatures, can 
give authority to a falsehood. The fugitive slave 
law resting upon the proposition that men of 
color had " no rights that white men are hound 
to respect," never had any authority with men of 
conscience because it was lacking t he only ele- 
ment of authority, while yet it was framed into a 
law and supported by political parties who in- 
corporated it as a plank in their platforms. All 
Governmental authority to he effective must he 
asserted in truth. The parent maintains con- 
trol over his child, the teacher over his pupils, 
and the ruler over his subjects, only by the au- 
thority of truth. God Himself is omnipitcnt only 
because all His works are done in truth. This 
it is that commands the faith of all that love and 
obey Him. This it is that discomfits all that 
contradict His will and disobey His truth. Jesus 
spake always with authority, which rested like 
all binding authority in the sanctions of truth. 
But the evidence of the truth He spoke He ad- 
duced from no external proof. He consulted no 
authorities, He quoted no precedents as the basis 
of His claim to 1 e believed, but appealed always 



62 INTERNAL AUTHORITY, 

to the convictions of His hearers to testify to the 
truth of His sayings. 

The propositions of the sermon on the Mount 
are as truly instructive to human reason as are 
those of geometry. Nobody ever quotes Euclid 
as authority for the propositions which he enun- 
ciated. The laws of the triangle are believed not 
on any human authority; they are believed be- 
cause they are eternally true, and the evidence 
of their truth is found in the soul of the reasoner 
himself. 

Jesus had faith in men as the pianist lias faith 
in his instrument, and who, without offering out- 
Bide proof of his power as ;i musician, strikes the 
keys and waits for the response from within to 
testify to the truth of Ins claim. Tn the sermon 
on the .Mount .lesus broke through all the so- 
called conservatism ami conventionalism of the 
times and went straight to the moral center of 
things. He ignored the letter of the law and 
gave to the people its spiritual, vital, soul-stir- 
ring truth with authority, and all the people said 
amen: they demanded no proof. The evidence 
of His authority was the voice divine within 
themselves. The germs of truth are innate in 
the human spirit as the germs of the plant are 
innate in the seed, and as the latter responds to 
the elements of nature external to itself. So the 



INTERNAL AUTHORITY. •">■' 

former responds to the voice of truth spoken 
through the external ear. 

Here as it seems to me is the preacher's start- 
ing point. Here is the point at whieh to study 
Christ as our model in preaching. Standing he- 
fore the listening, inquiring, hungering souls of 
men, how am I to move the masses and satisfy 
their spiritual demands? 

One thing is certain, I must find my model in 
the example of my Master. I must speak with 
authority and not as the Scribes. And I must 
learn the value of my preaching not by compar- 
ing it with the systematic theology of the schools, 
with the precedents of the church, or with the 
standards of accredited orthodoxy, hut by study- 
ing the response it gains in the moral convictions 
of men. The mind loves truth. It is a slander 
upon human nature to say that the mind hates 
the truth. Truth is the natural correlative of 
mind, as much as light is the natural correlative 
of the eye. If I fail to get the consciences of the 
people in sympathy with me, if my sayings do 
not find an affirmative response in their convic- 
tions; if conscience revolts at my doctrines, no 
array of outside proof will give my words authori- 
ty. The highest of all authority is the authority 
of the human conscience. I hold to the doctrine 
of human depravity as distinctly as did our 



INTERNAL AUTHORITY. 



fathers of olden time. It is a doctrine about the 
truth of which, neither the Bible nor human 
.consciousness admits of any shadow of doubt. 
But the truth of depravity docs not necessitate 
the old notion that preaching which fails to 
offend unregenerated men, which gains their ap- 
proval, which wins their attention and commands 
their sympathies is daubing with untempered 
piortar; that it is the saying of smooth things 
that beget carnal security and spiritual indiffer- 
ence. Whatever the honest convictions of men 
approve as right, gives them no offense, even 
though practically they do the wrong. The 
practical debauiche whose conscience confesses 
the sin and shame of his acts, receives without a 
murmur and with conscious approval the procla- 
mation of that lofty standard of purity that 
Christianity erects. In his inmost being there is 
a witness to the truth of the preacher's words, 
and though he practically disobey the law, his 
mind assents that it is holy, just and good. The 
drunkard, enslaved and debased by an evil habit, 
rinds in his heart emphatic approval when the 
sin and suffering of drunkenness are contrasted 
with the innocent joy of temperance. The truth 
does not offend him, but often delights him when 
practically too depraved and weak to obey it. 
The covetous man practically dead to the work 



INTERNAL AUTHORITY. 55 

of beneficence, finding in his heart, as all men 
must, conscious assent to the truth of the golden 
rule, accepts with pleasure the preacher's words 
when he enforces that rule as the only condition 
of a good life here or hereafter, although he be 
morally too selfish to practice it. His mind is so 
constituted — all minds are so constituted — de- 
praved and wicked though they be, that the 
rightfulness of that law will carry their judg- 
ment and gain their assent. 

It is not the preaching which moves the con- 
victions of men that repel them from the preach- 
er; it is preaching that fails to move their con- 
victions; preaching that falls upon the ear, but 
carries no impression to the heart on which men 
turn their backs. Men will not listen to the dry 
homilies of scholastic theology that have been 
pitched in a different key every once in a hun- 
dred years or oftener, since the beginning of the 
Christian era. They will not listen to debates 
and hair-splittings about " forms, and about 
words, as the Apostle says, to no profit, but to the 
subverting of the hearers; but if a man show 
himself approved of God, a workman that need- 
eth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word 
of truth," and appealing ever to the sure wit- 
ness, the voice "divine within the breasts of his 
hearers for the evidence of his authority, it will 



INTERNAL AUTHORITY, 



be said of that man as it was said of Jesus Him- 
self, " the common people heard Him gladly." 

Jesus made the conscience the court of last ap- 
peal in all His addresses to men. When a mad- 
dened throng would stone a poor fallen woman to 
death, He took an appeal from the tribunal that 
sentenced her to death to that of their own eon- 
sciences. "Let him that hath dorte no sin cast 
the first stone." Under this appeal, and with 
His interpretation of the sin of adultery, every 
hand was paralyzed, and they all, self-accused, 
slunk away humiliated, ashamed and discom- 
fited. He spake to them with authority that 
found its sanction in their own breasts. 

When the lawyer wanted to know what good 
thing he could do that lie might have eternal 
life, He told him to keep the commandments. 
The lawyer claimed to have done this from his 
youth up; Jesus did not dispute him, though he 
knew, however perfectly he had done it in the 
letter, he had not done it in the spirit. And in 
answer to the question, "who is my neighbor?" 
He told him the story of the good Samaritan, in- 
troducing in a dramatic way the priest and the 
levite, men of the lawyers own sort, who also 
claimed to have kept the commandments. 
" Which now of these three thinkest thou was 
neighbor to him that fell among thieves?" The 



INTK11NA1, AHT1LOK1TY. 



57 



lawyer's own conscience is now the umpire to 
decide the momentous question, whether or not 
he had kept the commandments, by Loving his 

neighbor as himself. Jesus did not turn round 
to him and say, this despised Samaritan with 
whom all the Jews refuse to have dealings, is a 
better man than you; but out of his own month 
he condemned him by extorting the confession, 
" he that showed mercy on him." This little 
drama in which the spirit of the Divine law is 
brought to the sight of the lawyer, and by means 
of which he stands self-convicted, did more to 
confirm his authority in the mind of the man 
than a volume of theological arguments could 
have done.' The same result was brought about 
in the case of the covetous young man who had 
kept all the commandments and asked, " what 
lack I yet?" Jesus did not preach to him an 
hour about the sin of covetousness but touched 
the keys of his conscience; "go sell that thou 
hast and distribute to the poor and thou shalt 
have treasure in heaven, and come and follow 
me." When the young man heard that saying 
he did not go away angry. The rightfulness of 
the command he could not reject; his conscience 
bore witness to this; he saw the hollowness of all 
his own pretentions, and went away sorrowful. 
But must I not preach all Christian doctrine? 



INTERNAL AUTHORITY. 



Must I not declare the whole counsel of God, 
whether men will hear or forbear, and is not a 
" thus saith the Lord," a sufficient guarantee that 
my preaching is with authority? Yes, that is 
verily so. But I hold that there is a " thus saith 
the Lord" in the human soul, as well as in the 
written word, and that the response from within 
is mere potent to convince the judgment, and in- 
fluence the moral character, than the behest from 
without. If the commandment from without fail 
of a response from the voice within, then it can 
not be said of the preacher that he spake as one 
having authority, albeit he may seem to be sup- 
ported by a " thus saith the Lord." Take a plain 
case by way of illustration. The doctrine of 
future punishment is revealed in the Bible. No 
truth is more clearly made out from God's word 
than this, and I have very little respect either 
for the good sense or moral honesty of ministers 
in orthodox churches who are pandering to the 
popular desire to have hell abolished as a factor 
in the Christian system. 

But when I say this, I will confess that the 
preaching .of hell as it has been done by very 
many orthodox preachers of all denominations, 
has been fruitful of infinite mischief, and has re- 
pelled more men from the truth than all the 
preaching and books of sceptical writers on the 



INTERNAL A UTIM )H ITY , !)!» 

other side of the question put together, A literal 
interpretation of the language of the Bible on 
this subject fails to convey the truth of the Bible, 
If the sign be taken for the thing signified, neith- 
er conscience nor common sense will accept the 
dogma, and though the preacher have the letter 
of scripture in support of his position, he will 
fail to be supported by the honest convictions of 
sensible men, and nobody will accept his theories 
as of one having authority. If the figures of 
scripture be employed as they were originally in- 
tended to be employed as signs of great spiritual 
realities inseparable from the soul of the sinner, 
necessitated by the fact of sin, and realized now, 
and always, where sin abides, then retribution 
will be seen as an inevitable necessity resulting 
from a law that nothing can change, and it will 
go home to the convictions of men as a truth that, 
must rule tlje moral judgment. 

Take another of our cardinal Christian doc- 
trines, I do not like to accuse the Fathers harsh- 
ly. I believe they were actuated, many of them, 
by honest motives, But honest motives have 
given rise to immense mischief sometimes in this 
world- Under the plea of honest motives the 
right of private judgment is now, and always has 
been denied to all the votaries of the Roman 
Catholic faith. They believe under penalties 



OU INTERNAL AUTHORITY. 

what the Church believes, no more, no less, no 
different. The terrors of the inquisition were al- 
ways opposed to the behests of the individual 
conscience, and the fires of purgatory await all 
who assert the right to believe what the Church 
forbids. The Fathers were loud and emphatic in 
their condemnation of all violence done by Ro- 
mish Priests to the right of conscience, little 
thinking that the denunciations of heresy, of in- 
fidelity and scepticism, ascribed to honest arme- 
nians and Christian ministers, who bad honest 
doubts about some of the formulas of trinitarian 
theology, and which drove many good men out 
of the church, was really the same spirit, and 
only lacked the power to make itself a tyranny 
no less intolerable. 

Take as an example, tie? doctrine of the Trinity. 
Fifty years ago the Congregational churches of 
New England were rent in twain; one-half was 
repelled and went off in a tangent into error by 
reason of the persistent violence done to the hon- 
est convictions of good men by the dogmatic for- 
mulas promulgated and insisted upon by the or- 
thodox ministers. Certain statements of doc- 
trine were declared to be revealed in the Bible, 
and whether or not they could be unfolded so as. 
to be comprehensible to reason, they must be be- 
lieved under penalty of Anathema Maranatha, 



INTERNAL AUTHORITY. Ill 

Instead of accepting and inviting everybody to 
accept the concrete, Divine human, God, man, 
Christ, as the only satisfying portion of the sin- 
ful soul, the only Savior of lost men, they must 
undertake to analyze His person, to show how 
much of it is human and how much of it is Di- 
vine, and quarrel over the question whether He 
is co-evil with, and equal to the Father, or sub- 
ordinate and subject to the Father. Whether He 
be a man manifesting the attributes of God, or 
actually God in the form of a man. And with- 
out settling any' of these points (for there is as 
much scripture on one side as the other), they 
run the whole subject into a mystery, and con- 
fessing the impossibility to unfold the mystery 
to the acceptance of reason; they undertake to 
enforce belief in it irrespective of the approval of 
either reason or conscience. The consequence, as 
everybody can now see, has been disastrous to 
the church and to the souls of men. Infidelity 
has fattened by the breach, and the church has 
lost half her moral power. No truth is more 
clearly revealed to my mind, no truth finds 
readier response in my heart, than the truth that 
Jesus is a Divine Savior, that " God was in 
Christ reconciling the world to Himself." That 
" the word was God," that " He gave Himself for 
us," and that " there is salvation in no other." 



INTERNAL AVTiKlUlTV, 



As a preacher, it is my duty to set Him forth as 
" the chief among ten thousand, the one alto- 
gether lovely," to so preach Christ and Him cru- 
cified as that my message shall gain the sympa- 
thies of men. But it is no part of my duty to 
debate with the sinner about the mysteries of tin- 
Godhead, and repel him from me by disputing 
questions that neither he nor I can fathom. 
Jesus would rather have all the world call Him 
the son of Mary, and think of Him as the son of 
man, than have a single soul fail of His salva- 
tion, or have His disciples split and quarrel over 
the mysteries of His person. Faith in Himself, 
as the only refuge of the lost soul, is the matter 
of chief importance in His sight. 

To gain this end, was the high, the only ob- 
ject of His incarnation. " Believe on the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved. I am the 
bread of life." Bread is good, and whether or 
not we understand its component elements is a 
matter of entire indifference, so long as it feed 
our starving nature. The hungry man eats it, 
rejoices in it, and lives by it, without stopping a 
moment to analyze it. The bread of God which 
came down from Heaven is the only satisfying 
food for the human soul. To give this bread in 
its concrete perfection to lost men is the high 
function of the preacher, and he who stops to ana- 



INTERNAL AUTHORITY. 63 

lyze this living bread, and debate about the ori- 
gin of its component elements, is sure to turn a 
feast of love into a scene of strife which ends in 
spiritual starvation. 

In every age of the church men have been 
valiant for the faith once delivered to the Saints, 
as its defenders have understood, and interpreted 
it, but the faith has no fixed status. Preaching 
has had no fixed authority for the reason that it 
has not been tested by an unchanging standard. 
Men have fixed their standards by the interpre- 
tations of the word of God. But interpretations 
have changed with every advancing step in the 
world's progress in Christian thought and civil- 
ization. Preaching, instead of finding its au- 
thority in reason, the only infallible guide, has 
assumed the prerogative of bending reason to a 
conformity with its mutable ever varying stand- 
ards. It has undertaken the sacriligious office 
of laying its hand on this Divine monitor within 
the soul of man, of stultifying its voice, of com- 
manding it to come down from its rightful throne 
in the soul, and fall into line with its changea- 
ble, fallible, erring notions. The result of this is 
always fatal to the progress of truth; fatal to the 
moral wellfare of mankind. But let this order 
be reversed, unfetter the human conscience, lis- 
ten attentively to its responses, adjust your in- 



64 INTERNAL AUTHORITY. 

terpretations according to its behests, then will 
your interpretations be a " thus saith the Lord " 
from without, and meet the responses of a " thus 
saith the Lord " from within. This was the 
method of Jesus when He unfolded the philoso- 
phy of the moral life in the beatitudes and pro- 
nounced everything blessed that the Scribes in 
their selfishness tried to avoid — mourning, pov- 
erty, hungering and thirsting for some good out 
of and above themselves — persecution and revil- 
ing for His sake, when He exposed the hollow- 
ness and hypocrisy of Jewish formalities, and 
commanded spiritual worship in the inmost 
closet of the soul where " He that seeth in secret 
shall reward openly;" when He convicted the 
censorious judgment of a beam in its own eye; 
when He showed up the worthlessness of salt in 
the human character that had lost its saltness, 
and of moral light that is hidden from the eyes 
of men; when He unfolded the spirituality of the 
Divine law, making lust to be adultery, and an- 
ger to be murder; when He pointed to God as a 
Father more bountiful and affectionate than any 
earthly father; when He pointed to the narrow 
way of virtue and to the broad way of sin and 
destruction; also to the security and value oi the 
treasure in Heaven; in all His matchless teach- 
ing in that matchless sermon, how easily and how 



INTERNAL AUTHORITY. 65 

naturally He brought the multitudes into sym- 
pathy with Himself, while at the same time, He 
probed their hearts to the very bottom, and left 
no room on which depravity could find a place 
for the sole of its foot. No other sermon so com- 
pletely routed every refuge of lies, and laid bare 
every hiding place of sin. And yet the common 
people — the promiscuous crowd — heard Him 
gladly. " They were astonished at His doctrine, 
for He taught them as one having authority." 
Every conscience responded, and all the people 
said amen. 

I have time, in conclusion, but for a hare ref- 
erence to a few remarkable men in the earliest 
and in laterjeriods, who have been distinguished 
by the success of their preaching to move the 
masses religiously. At the preaching of Peter in 
Jerusalem the multitudes were pricked in their 
hearts, and cried out, " Men and brethren, what 
shall we do? And the same day there were 
added unto them three thousand souls." The 
preaching of Peter was a rehearsing of the same 
old story of Jesus and His love that is now em- 
balmed in song, and that every successful 
preacher must repeat together with a direct ap- 
peal to the convictions of his hearers as particeps 
criminis in the tragedy of His death, " whom ye 
with wicked hands have crucified and slain." 



INTERNAL AUTHORITY, 



Convicting the people of their sins did not re- 
pel them from the preacher, but drew them all 
the closer into sympathy with him. The voice 
within justified the charge and confirmed his au- 
thority. 

All successful revivalists of our own, and other 
times, speak with authority, and not as the 
Scribes. The ground of their authority, and the 
extent of their success, is measured always by 
the response they get from the consciences of the 
p sople. When they cry out " men and brethren, 
what shall we do to be saved," then, and only 
then, can the preacher he sure that lie is rightly 
dividing the word of truth. 

" Who is sufficient for these things?" Not the 
mechanical sermonizer whose humilities squares 
with the creed, and ends by pouring into the 
minds of men what God has written upon twelve 
tables of stone, hut he who draws out and brings 
to the light of consciousness what God lias writ- 
ten upon the table of their hearts, and thus wins 
the spontaneous confession that lie speaks as one 
having authority and not as the Scribes. 



IHK CJfOWN 0? If TKOtSNKW |J7 



The Crown of Righteousness, 



Henceforth there is Laid up for me a crown of right* 
eousness, which the Lord the righteous judge, shall give. 
me at that day; and not to me only, hut unto all them 
also that love His appearing, — II Timothy ; IV ; S, 

Having fought a good fight, having finished his 
course, having kept the faith, the great Apostle 
now in the presence of the martyr's death, fixes 
his eye on the martyr's crown, and in triumph, 
declares " I am now ready to he offered," The 
greatest of all practical questions is. involved in 
this brief reminiscence of the Apostle. What 
was it on which his eye was fixed and which he 
denominates a crown of righteousness that gave, 
him the victory over all his foes and bore him 
jn triumph to the heardsman's block with exult- 
ant joy? You and I, my friends, want to know 
definitely what is meant by the crown of right- 



(38 THE CROWN OF KIOHTl'JOUKNKSy . 

eousness, which was the prize of the Apostle';-: 
high calling. In calling it a crown, he compares 
it with that which in all earthly strifes and con- 
flicts belongs only to the one of highest merit. 
"They who run in a race run all but one re* 
ceiveth the prize," and he the best one of all. In 
earthly kingdoms the crown belongs only to the 
highest dignities, and there is but one in a gen- 
eration to wear it. Though there be many of 
royal birth; many in whose veins courses royal 
blood; many who rank high in the royal family, 
yet there is but one to wear the crown. The 
crown is of costliest material, the richest and 
most ornate thing of art; it represents the highest. 
wealth, the highest power, and the highest glory 
of the world. It is the badge of imp-rial sover- 
eignty, of executive authority, of royal preroga- 
tive lie. therefore, who wears the crow.., or by 
the rights of primogeniture is heir apparent to 
the crown is regarded as the most fortunate of all 
Ins countrymen. Hut there i- a kingdom, ami 
the time of the Apostle's departure to that king- 
dom was now at hand, whereof all the subjects 
true and loyal wear a crown. A crown more ex- 
cellent than all earthly diadems, representing 
truer dignity than that which attaches to all 
earthly royalty a crown of righteousness which, 
in the coming of that kingdom, the Lord, the 



THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 69 

righteous judge, shall give unto them. In the 
text reference is made to this crown by the Apos- 
tolus, and it is the sheet anchor of his confidence, 
the bulwark of his hope, the inspiration of his 
triumphant joy in view of his exit from the battle 
fields of the church militant to the glorious rest of 
the church triumphant in Heaven. 

In the scriptures the figure of the crown is a 
favorite emblem by which to represent the high- 
est achievements in wisdom and righteousness. 
" Wisdom is the principal tiling, therefore get 
wisdom, and with all thy getting get understand- 
ing. Exalt her and she shall promote thee; she 
shall bring thee to honor when thou dost em- 
brace her; she shall give to thy head an orna- 
ment of grace, a crown of glory shall she deliver 
to thee. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible 
crown, but we are incorruptible. And when the 
Chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a 
crown of glory that fadeth not away. Be thou 
faithful unto death and I will give thou a crown 
of life. Behold I come quickly, hold that fast 
which thou hast that no man take thy crown. 
And they had on their heads crowns of gold, and 
they worship Him that livith forever and ever 
and cast their crowns before the throne." 

So costly and so precious a thing as the dia- 
dem of kings being chosen as a type of that im- 



70 THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

mortal crown which is the prize of the Chris- 
tian's high calling, there must be a significance 
in the use of the term worthy of our most serious 
consideration. 

Let us inquire, then, what is this crown of 
righteousness for which the Saints are to strug- 
gle and pray, to labor and fight in this life, and 
which they are to wear eternally in the life to 
come? The Apostle calls it a crown of righteous- 
ness. There was no vaguements or uncertainty in 
his mind about the Heaven that awaited him. 
His faith which, throughout his whole Christian 
warfare, had bourn him above all trial and suffer- 
ing and conflict, and given him the victory over 
the world, the flesh, and the Devil, lighting up 
evermore the path of duty, and settling all doubts 
in his own mind, as to the line of his duty, his 
faith still clear, and unfailing to the last looks 
beyond the curtain, and sees the crown of right- 
eousness that awaited him in Heaven. All men 
look forward across the dark valley and shadow 
of death with hope of something better than that 
which they experience here. 

It is a principle in Christian philosophy well 
made out by reason, and justified by all human 
experience, that the moral character of a man 
takes its color and odor from the object on which 
his faith rests. If a man he a Mohamitan, it is 



THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. <1 

because his faith rests on the sensuality of Mo- 
hamitanism. If a Pagan, he is such because his 
faith allies his soul to -the senseless objects of 
Pagan worship. If he be a Spiritualist, it is be- 
cause his faith rests on the lying reports of nec- 
romancy and demonology. If he be a miser, he 
is so because his faith rests on money. * * * 
The faith of Christians is not uniform concern- 
ing that which we call Heaven, and as Heaven, 
the home which all good people hope to attain, is 
a leading and paramount object of faith, so the 
Heaven we depict to our imagination must give 
tone to our spiritual experience, to our religious 
life and endeavor. I will try to illustrate this 
point as it relates to the diverse imaginings of 
Christians about the future reward of the good in 
Heaven. The realities of Heaven and all spirit- 
ual realities are brought to our conception through 
sensible figures. This is a necessity arising from 
the very nature of things, and from our relation 
to sense and sensible objects. There is no other 
vehicle through which spiritual conceptions can 
be conveyed to us except through figures of sense. 
The spiritual world has no language that we, in 
our gross form of life, can understand. Hence, 
when it would converse with us it does it by signs 
and symbols just as we do when we try to convey, 
the thoughts of our mind to a foreigner that can- 



'* THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

not understand a word of our language. In such 
a case, we by the use of signs and objects of sight 
convey, or try to convey, our thoughts to the 
mind of the foreigner. And we very well know 
how liable lie is to take the sign for the thing 
signified, and to get an idea through the clumsy 
vehicle employed widely different from that we 
intended to convey. In the scriptures all man- 
ner of figures are employed to convey to men an 
idea of the heavenly slate, all which figures are 
but a mere vehicle employed to accommodate 
our sensuous understanding and help us to a con- 
ception of that spiritual glory that eye hath not 
seen, nor ear heard, and that hath not entered 
into the heart of man to conceive. We take the 
sign for the thing signified, and our Heaven, in- 
stead of being a'realm of spiritual good where all 
sense, and all sensuous pleasures are forever 
superceded; where the light of the eye is eclipsed 
by the superior spiritual light of the sun of right- 
eousness; where the pleasures of passion, the en- 
joyments of appetite, and all the beauties of ma- 
terial things are forever swollowed up in the 
ocean of God's eternity and the enjoyment of his 
righteousness, purity, and mysterious goodness, 
becomes more or less a Heaven of sense, a walled 
city with pearly gates and golden pavements, 
with a pure river of literal water running through 



THE CKOWN OP RIGHTEOUSNESS. 7H 

its midst, bordered by pastures of perminent 
green, and whose banks arc lined with ever- 
bearing fruit trees, beautiful to the eye whose 
fruit is good for food, and whose leaves arc for 
the healing of tbe nations. We are prone to for- 
get that these most precious things of earth are 
but the signs and symbols employed by revela- 
tion to convey to our conception an idea of the 
unutterable glory and good of a purely spiritual 
realm of being. In our grossness and sensuous- 
ness we rest our hearts upon the sign, we accept 
the vehicle as our immortal portion, and come 
short in our conception, and consequently, in our 
spiritual experience of the true heavenly treasure 
which the vehicle was intended to convey to us, 
we say, if God can make us happy here by feed- 
ing us with so many good things in this world, 
how much more happy can He make us in Heav- 
en by feeding us with better things of the same 
sort there. If social life here, and domestic love 
are sources of highest earthly joy to us, how in" 
fmitely must these joys be intensified in Heaven. 
If this is a world of beauty fitted up on purpose 
to stimulate a response to the beautiful in the 
soul of man, and to feed and satisfy the taste thus 
engendered, what inconceivable beauty must 
adorn the new Jerusalem, the heavenly city 
where our love of the beautiful will be infinitely 



74 THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

intensified, and all our capacities will be corre- 
spondingly enlarged. 

On Heaven thus literalized, and thus materi- 
alized, we fix our faith. Thus portrayed to our 
imagination it becomes the inspiration of our 
Christian endeavor. We say to ourselves, such a 
Heaven is worthy of our life-long labor. This is 
a good world in which are many enjoyments and 
many means of* happiness. That is a better 
world because the same enjoyments are indefi- 
nitely augmented and purified and made perfect. 
That is a better country than this, and I will 
most assiduously comply in my heart and man- 
ner of life with all the conditions prescribed to 
an emigrant to that country. Heaven is the end 
of my toils and labors, and prayers and alms- 
giving. Heaven is the mark of tin 1 prizes of my 
high calling. I will be good and faithful, and 
just, because this is the way to Heaven: the Only 
condition on which I can hope to arrive at the 
'golden city and gain an entrance through the 
pearly <_ r at-s, and forever bask in a country where 
no night is, where frosts never fade th^ flower, 
and where spontaneous fruits forever feed the 
nature that knows no satiety throughout immor- 
tal existence. And it is not strange that we thus 
speak and thus conceive of Heaven, for this is 
the language of sermons and books that we hive 



THE CROWN OP RIGHTEOUSNESS, 7-') 

heard and read all our days. The charge of ma- 
terializing and sensualizing Heaven lies not alone 
against the believers in the koran, and the savage 
whose faith rests on imaginary hunting fields 
across the river of death. Christianity itself has 
fdteralized the symbols of revelation, has taken 
the sign for the thing signified, and alas, too of- 
ten settled its faith in a. gross materialism which 
cheats the soul of the true goo I w'iiieh all the po- 
etic figures of scripture are employed to indicate. 
And just in proportion as this has been done has 
the Christian experience been of a low, unsatis- 
fying order. If the faith rests on a material 
Heaven of sensuous good, and if virtue is re- 
garded as that which is done at the command of 
God for the sake of such a Heaven of reward, 
what else is the Christian than a mere 1 hireling, 
an absolute slave to self-interest, working for 
wages? 

But the faith of the Apostle rested on objects 
of another sort. He has told us the character of 
Heaven in these words: " Eye hath, not seen nor 
ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart 
of man to conceive the things which God hath 
prepared for them that love Him." Which glo- 
rious words (says an eminent preacher), are 
sometimes strangely misinterpreted, as if the 
Apostle meant rhetorically to exalt the concept 



76 THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

tion of the heavenly world, as of something be- 
yond all power to imagine or to paint. He meant 
something infinitely deeper. The Heaven of God 
is not only that which '' eye hath seen," but that 
which eye can never see; its glories are not of 
that kind at all that can be made manifest to 
the eye in forms of beauty, or pour in melody on 
the enraptured ear — not such as genius in its 
most gifted hour (here called the heart of man), 
can invent or imagine; it is something which 
these sensuous organs of ours never can appre- 
ciate, bliss of another kind altogether revealed to 
the spirit of man by the spirit of (hid — joys such 
as spirit alone can receive. Do you ask what 
these are: "' The fruits of the spirit are love, joy, 
long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 
meekness, temperance" — in one word, righteous- 
ness. 

On this the Apostle fixed his eye when the 
time of his departure was at hand, not as a step- 
ping stone to something better beyond that eve 
can see, and ear can hear, and that sense craves, 
but he fixed his eye on righteousness as itself the 
ultimate, the highest good, the end for which all 
other ends were appointed, and to which all other 
ends are inferior. Righteousness with him was 
the summum bonum, the last and highest of all 
spiritual achievements. This itself, a d not 



THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 77 

something beyond to which this is but a means, 
but this as the end of all toil, and conflict and 
sacrifice was the mark for the prize of his high 
calling in Christ Jesus. This was the crown that 
he saw by the eye of his faith laid up for him in 
Heaven. 

Let us contemplate the subject for a few mo- 
ments in this light, and see if we cannot get a 
truer glimpse of Heaven than we are wont t<> 
conceive. The Apostle calls it a crown not of 
stars and diamonds, but of righteousness. Here 
let me ask what was the primary leading idea in 
the plan of salvation? What brought the Savior 
from Heaven to earth to sacrifice, suffer and die? 
The answer commonly given, and the one to 
which our minds have always been accustomed 
in all our religious education is, that there is a 
dreadful Hell in the next world to avoid, and a 
glorious happy Heaven to gain, without a Savior 
we could neither avoid the one or gain the other. ' 
I will not contradict this answer, but I will give 
a different one, which is this: Christ came to 
redeem man from sin, from unrighteousness, and 
to make him holy and righteous. " Christ is the 
end of the law" (it does not say for happiness or 
for Heaven), but "Christ is the end of the law for 
righteousness to every one that believeth." Right- 
eousness is the end of Christ's work of redemp- 



78 THE CROWN OP RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

lion, the very thing to be gained; itself is the sal- 
vation that comes through the atonement, and 
unrighteousness is the dreadful thing to be 
avoided. To gain the one in Heaven, not simply 
the stepping stone to Heaven, itself is Heaven. 
To incur the other and come under its power is 
Hell. The necessity, therefore, of an atonement, 
is entirely independent of the question of future 
reward and punishment. If this present life 
were immortal; if there was no death of the body, 
and no world but this w r orld, man being as he is, 
unrighteous and unreconciled to God, would be 
in no less need of an atoning Savior; in no less 
need of salvation. The future Heaven to be 
gained, and the future Hell to be shunned, is be- 
gun here, and now, with every one of us. He 
that is righteous now will receive his reward in 
the day of judgment in these words: " Let him 
be righteous still. He that is holy let him be 
holy still." And on the other hand: " He that 
is filthy " will pass under condemnation by lis- 
tening to the dreadful sentence, " let him be 
filthy still." Christ came to make us good; this 
is the end of His great and beneficent mission. 
In the words of Paul to Titus, " who gave himself 
for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, 
and purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous 
of good works." 



THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 79 

The great struggle with the Apostle, as with 
•all good men, was a struggle with sin; against 
this foe to himself and to God he had fought a 
good fight, and now. having finished his course 
and kept the faith, he looked forward with ex- 
ultant joy to his compleie deliverance from us 
power, to that crown of righteousness which was 
in store for him beyond the vail. And in all this, 
his feelings and aspirations were the result of no 
superstitious frenzy, but were guided by the 
soundest reason and philosophy. 

Righteousness is the normal condition of the 
soul — the element for which the soul was made. 
Righteousness is the correlative of the soul just 
as atmospheric air is the correlative of the lungs; 
just as light is the correlative of the eye, and just 
as nutriment is the correlative of the blood. To 
be and to do what God requires the soul to be 
and to do, is the only and necessary condition of 
perfect blessedness and everlasting good. In this 
state of righteousness the soul was originally 
made, and it was in this state when in common 
with all the things He had made, God pro- 
nounced it very good. But the soul was made 
free, with the power of choice, with susceptibili- 
ties of temptation, and with an independent will. 
Hence the possibility of unrighteousness. It fell 
and came into bondage to evil. It fell out of its 



80 THE CROYVX OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

normal condition; out of the element in which it 
was made to live and bask forever in the sun- 
light of unalloyed blessedness. And as the fish 
thrown from the water in which alone it was 
made to live, struggles, and longs, and gasps, and 
dies, so the soul in unrighteousness, is out of its 
element. It struggles, and writhes; within it are 
the kindled flashes of an unquenchable flame; 
within it are the incipient gnawings of an undy- 
ing worm. It is self-accused, self-tortured, self- 
condemned, and with a certain fearful looking 
foe of judgment and fiery indignation, it is self- 
consumed, ever treasuring up wrath against the 
day of wrath. 

The scriptures everywhere reveal to us the ap- 
palling fact that this condition of unrighteous- 
- universal; we have all gone one of the 
way: there is none that doeth good— no, not one, 
and the consciences of all men corroborate the 
testimony. The doctrine of human depravity is 
not a doctrine peculiar to Christianity. It is a 
central truth of natural as well as revealed reli- 
gion. The incense of Pagan altars as well as the 
blood of bulls and goats sprinkled on Jewish al- 
tars, do less than the fastings and repentings of 
Christianity, recognize the fact written in the 
consciences of all men that we are all sinners, all 
out of our natural element, out of the normal con- 



THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 81 

dition in which we were made to live and in 
which consists the true blessedness of the soul. 
Man alone, of all the creatures God has made, has 
placed himself in antagonism to the laws of his 
being. The beasts of the field, the fish of the 
sea, and the fowls of the air, fulfil each after its 
kind, the laws of their being. Each blade of 
grass, and every opening flower, responds harmo- 
niously to the laws that ordain its existence. 
Each germinating seed of grain is a promise of 
the full grown corn in the ear. The budding 
acorn is a prophecy of the stately and symmet- 
rical oak centuries to come. The lofty cedar 
that has towered proudly to the Heavens, bid- 
ding defiance to wind and storm for a hundred 
years, has attained its beauty, its majesty and 
strength, by obedience to fixed and certain laws. 
The harmony of the spheres results from har- 
mony with law. Revolving worlds, which per- 
form their annual round with a punctuality 
more precise than that denoted by the exactest 
chronometer, travel evermore in the exact path 
marked out by the hand of their Almighty Cre- 
ator. Man alone has got out of his orbit, has 
violated the law of his Maker, has resisted the 
restraints of his goodness, and is bent on certain 
destruction. Hence the grand and all absorbing 
inquiry: How shall man be just with God? This 



82 the Crown of righteousness. 

was ; lie earnest inquiry of the patriarch Job in 
the full and sorrowful consciousness of the lost 
and hopeless condition of the soul in this state of 
unrighteousness and bondage to evil. It lias 
been the all absorbing inquiry of reflecting 
minds, under all systems of religious faith, 
heathen and Jewish, no less than Christian. 
Even skepticism and infidelity itself, has not uu- 
frequently had its hours of anxious solicitude. 
And the exclamation has been: "Oh wretched 
man that I am who shall deliver me from the 
body <>f this death? How shall 1 be just with 
God?" How shall I be free from the bondage of 
sin? " Mien and brethren, what must I do to he 
saved?" How can my soul be righteous in the 
sight of my God? This solicitude is portrayed 
in all the rites, the penances and the pilgrimages 
of heathen superstition, as well as in the types, 
the symbols and sacrificial altars of Jewish reli- 
gion. This want of religiousness is the greatest 
want of human nature. A want known, and felt, 
and deplored by men of all nations, under all re- 
ligious systems, and in all stages of human civil- 
ization. 

To answer this great want, to satisfy this uni- 
versal desideratum, is the glorious mission of 
Christianity. 



TIIK GROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 83 

It came to bring righteousness to the lost and 
sinning souls to men, 

'•But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus,, who of 
God is made unto us, wisdom and righteousness, 
and sanctifleation and redemption, 

" For He has made him to be sin for us who 
knew no sin, that we might be made the right- 
eousness of God in him, 

"For the kingdom of God is not meat and 
drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy, in 
the Holy Ghost, 

" For with the heart man believeth unto right- 
eousness. Christ is the end of the law for right- 
eousness to everyone that believeth. 

"They which receive abundance of grace and 
of righteousness, shall reign in life by one Jesus 
Christ," 

To bring righteousness to a world of unright- 
eousness and sin, not as a medium of some Letter 
good, but as itself the absolute good, the ultimate 
end, was the high and leading idea in the eon* 
ception and execution of the plan of salvation 
wrought out by Jesus Christ, Looking down 
from the height, of His heavenly mansion upon a 
world lying in sin and unrighteousness, upon a 
race lost and ruined by reason of its fall from 
primeval purit}', He entered upon his mission of 
love, the crowning idea of which was to work a 



84 THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

work of righteousness in the souls of men. To 
be a teacher of perfect righteousness in all His 
immaculate and wonderful life, to fulfil the law 
of righteousness in his death, and thus render it 
possible for the sinner to experience in his own 
soul the blessedness of innocence, the joy of right- 
eousness, as it' he had not sinned, and never 
known the bitterness of unrighteousness, 

A few brief reflections suggested by the forego- 
ing ideas will conclude niy subject: 

1st — 1 have desired to bring to view the spir- 
ituality of that state of being that we oall Heav- 
en. To free it from the signs and symbols of 
sense and hold it forth as abstractly and purely 
spiritual. 

We call a beautiful and a pleasanl earthly 
borne a type of II saven, an I so it is, the most tit- 
ting of all earthly types. But it is not the house 
in which w 'dwell, however capacious and costly, 
however richly furnished within, and however 
adorned with artistic beauty and taste without, 
that makes it like Heaven. It is not the downy 
if ease on whioh we rest our bodies, or this 
luxuries that load our tables that mal* 
earthly home like Heaven. Not the works of 
art that decoi-ate our walls, the sculpture, the 
painting- or the frescoes which please the ey i, of 
the sounl- of music that enrapture the ear make 



THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 00 

our earthly home like Heaven. All these good 
things may abide in our house and yet it may be 
a type of the veryest Hell. That which makes 
home a type of Heaven is independent of all these 
sensuous things and sensuous pleasures. That 
which makes home here like Heaven above, is 
something that eye hath not seen, that ear hath 
not heard, and that genius hath not conceived. 
It is love, joy, peace, paticnca, forbearance, 
charity, good will, the spirit of sacrifice for other's 
good, holiness, purity, sincerity, honesty — -in one 
word — righteousness. If these things be in yon, 
and abound, ruling all the activities of your 
household, and the heart of all its inmates, your 
home is not simply a type of Heaven; it is Heav- 
en absolutely begun below, even though your 
house be a cot, and all its appointments be made 
in poverty. Here, in the family circle, where 
love is, where all the fruits of the spirit abide, is 
found the very thing for. which Paul fought a 
good fight. The very thing for which we all 
strive and labor, and pray, viz: all the fruits of 
the spirit which constitute the gems of the heav- 
enly crown. 

But an earthly home, no matter how ample or 
how costly its appointments, where love is want- 
ing, where jealousy, mutual distrust, and mutual 
hate reside, is a Hell below. A pure mind, rather 



»b THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, 

than dwell under such a roof, would say: ° Oh 
for a lodge in pome vast wilderness " where hu- 
man voice is never heard, and nought of sound 
can reach the soul save the still small voice of 
the spirit of Go<L 

2nd — If these reflections are true, there is no 
longer any doubt or amhiguity about the signifi- 
cance of that crown of righteousness which is laid 
up for the good in Heaven. It is not something 
to be put on and off like an imperial crown; to 
be worn on great occasions and to be hid from 
view on ordinary occasions. It is part and par- 
cel of the soul itself, inseparable, the spring of all 
its joy. the beginning and the end, as well as the 
crown of its inconceivable glory. 

3rd — I remark, if the crown of righteousnes- 
waa worthy of those herculean endeavors that 
absorbed the great life, and commanded the ex- 
alted genius of the Apostle Paul, it is something 
in which we all have need of an interest. We 
know the day is not far distant when the time of 
our departure will be at hand. Shall we have it 
to s;iy. then, that we have fought a good fight, we 
have finished our course, we have kept the faith, 
and that henceforth there is laid up for ub a 
crown of righteousness in Heaven. This, my 
friends, is the most momentous question that 
tin 1 human soul is ever called upon to settle. 



THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 8/ 

Shall I wear a crown of complete righteousnes in 
Heaven, or shall I dwell in shame and everlast- 
ing contempt in Hell, is a question which I must 
decide for myself. No other can decide it for me, 
and I must decide it here and now. I have no 
lease of the future. While I speak, during the 
brief moments I have occupied in these remarks, 
a thousand souls have crossed the river of death, 
and ere an hour, a thousand more will follow. 
We know we all journey thither, and how near 
our approach none can tell. If we do not bear 
the cross on earth, we cannot wear the crown in 
Heaven. 



%0^ 



RETRIBUTION. 



RETRIBUTION 



Son, remember. — Luke XVI; 25. 

The allegory of the rich man and Lazarus, is 
given by our Lord to reveal the facts of immor- 
tality. Either He does not know what He is 
talking about; either He is an incompetent wit- 
ness, unworthy to be believed in respect to any 
of the great realities of God, of the soul of man, 
and of the retributions of eternity, or else by this 
allegory He actually draws aside the curtain and 
reveals facts the most momentous of all 'that the 



RETRIBUTION. 



human mind can contemplate. For by it He an- 
swers the question of the ages: " If a man die, 
shall he live again?" And confirms the assur- 
ance of the wise man; " the dust shall return to 
the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to 
God who gave it." Be our conception what it 
may of the ultimate form of being in the future 
world, this allegory settles the question as to its 
immediate form. It places the two characters 
which the drama introduces immediately after 
death in a state of conscious existence, with the 
capacities of knowledge, of joy, of sorrow, of re- 
flection, of judgment, of reason, and of memory. 
We know that they left behind all that was ma- 
terial, all that was visible. " The rich man died 
and was buried." Lazarus also died and was car- 
ried by angels into Abraham's bosom;" not his 
body, not anything tangible to sense, but he, 
Lazarus, was so carried. The allegory speaks of 
them precisely as if they had moved from one 
country to another. They have simply crossed 
the boundary line and waked up in all their in- 
dividual identity in a different country, with new 
surroundings, but with unchanged faculties of 



90 RETRIBUTION. 

soul. The leaving behind of their bodies is a 
matter scarcely noticed, and would not have been 
noticed at all but for the purpose of contrasting 
the condition of the two men in this world. The 
one by reason of his wealth, received the right of 
sepulture. Nothing is said about the body of the 
other. He is spoken of as if he went body and 
all to Heaven. The body cuts no figure with 
Lazarus, any more than the rags with which he 
was clothed. Body and rags both were left be- 
hind together. He had no longer any use tor 
either, and yet lie and the rich man both are 
spoken of just as they would have been if they 
had gone bodily into the other world. All that 
was real of them had gone. The}'' are the same 
identical persons there as here. They have cast 
off the garments which were here worn; they have 
left behind the house in which they dwelt, and 
have crossed the line retaining all that distin- 
guished them as rational beings. 

There is a radical difference between these two 
representative characters (for they are introduced 
to our notice as representative characters). The 
allegory is not supposed to lie given for the pur- 



RETRIBUTION. 91 

pose of reciting the history of ;i notable beggar on 
the one hand, and a notable millionaire on the 
other. But the beggar and millionaire are made 
to represent in a dramatic way two great classes 
of .humanity; the virtuous poor on the one side, 
and the hard handed, selfish, covetous rich on the 
other. The same red difference distinguished 
them here as there, The transition by death is 
not a transition to a differenl moral status. That 
is the same there as. here, The only difference is 
in appearanee, The rich man has left behind 
him all the guises by which his true mora] con- 
dition here was obscured; his mansion, Ins mon- 
ey, his garments of purple and fine linen, all his 
wealthy surroundings, and his naked soul is ex- 
posed in its true character. So Lazarus has left 
behind his loathsome body full of sores, and the 
tattered garments that bespoke his poverty, and 
with the true riches of that beatitude insured to 
the poor in spirit, has gone direct under a con- 
voy of angels into Abraham's bosom, which rep- 
resents figuratively to the mind of a Jew the high- 
est seat of celestial glory. Now. each man has 
found his true level in that world of being where 



82 RETRIBUTION. 

the actual is known and where there arc no dis- 
guises. The rich man has no longer any means 
of self-deception. He sees himself as he is seen. 
He knows himself as he is known. Apologies are 
all unavailing. They are now as transparent to 
himself as to God. Ha is compelled to stand 
upon his merits, and of them he has none. 

He is now in that condition in which the good 
or evil of his being is dependent on what he ;>. 
While in this world he found nil his good in what 
he had. His life here "consisted in the abund- 
ance of th« things that he possessed." Now he 
has nothing, and he is forced to turn his 
thoughts inward for something to make his exis- 
tolerable. I have nothing, what am I? I 
have wasted my probationary life ministering to 
my bodily lust, and in hoarding substance for 
the gratification of the pride of my carnal heart. 
My bodily lust, and my carnal heart, now 
the sleep that knows no waking. It is my never 
dying soul that lives and longs, that hungers and 
thirsts, that is out of harmony with itself, out of 
harmony with all its surroundings, out of har- 
mony with God, forever tossed on the sea of spir- 



RETRIBUTION, " ; ! 

• 

4tual unrest, lashed by the surges of remorse, arid 
stung perpetually by the scorpions of- a self?aecus- 

ing conscience. . for one drop of the comfort of 
that beatitude that the beggar now enjoys, who 
yesterday lay at my gate, to whom I refused the 
crumbs of my table. "Father Abraham send 
Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger " 
in the well of water that springs up in his own 
soul into everlasting life, " and cool my tongue, 
for I am tormented in the flame of this spiritual 
fire." But "Abraham said unto him, son, remem- 
ber that thou in thy life time receivedst thy good 
things, and likewise, Lazarus evil things, but now 
he is comforted, and thou art tormented. (< And 
besides all this, between us and you, there is a 
great gulf fixed, so that they that would pass from 
hence to you can not, neither can they pass io us 
that would come from thence." This language is 
of course the language of metaphor. The impas- 
sible gulf is a gulf of character, and the sentiment 
taught is that fixedness, final mold and temper 
of character was attained in this life. That there 
is a gulf of separation between the two classes 
into which the human family is divided, and al= 



RETRIBUTION. 



though the gulf is not impassible in the proba- 
tionary life, though it is possible here to get from 
the bad side to the good side, though probation 
is given for the purpose of encouraging repent- 
ance and reformation, and " while the lamp holds 
out to burn the vilest sinner may return," 
yet beyond the boundary of probation there is 
no such encouragement given, and the gulf is ab- 
solutely impassible. Keep out of mind the idea 
of geographical distance, and conceive of what is 
intended to be taught, viz: mural distance. The 
gulf is impassible, not by reason of any geologic 
chasm, but by reason of a moral status in the 
soul forever, and immovably fixed, which renders 
its affinity with good spirits impossible. Oil and 
water, though confined in the same vessel, and 
shaken together by however much of physical 
force, are nevertheless separated by an impassi- 
ble gulf impossible for either to cross, by reason 
of the inherent repulsion of each. So a soul con- 
firmed in selfishness and sin, has within it a nat- 
ural repulsion from God, from angels, and from 
the pure and sanctified. And in the soul of the 
just made perfect in Heaven there is a repulsion 



RETRIBUTION. 95 

equally strong, from whatsoever defileth and 
maketh a lie. The law of moral affinity and re- 
pulsion begins in this world. We see it opperat- 
ing every where in the social as well as in the re- 
ligious world. Between the refined and cultured, 
and the debased and vulgar, there is no affinity. 
There is a social gulf between them which is 
made passible only by reconstruction of charac- 
ter and assimilation of taste and social habits. 
The same law is more distinctly manifest between 
the religiously devout and morally debased. The 
design of the probationary state, and of all reli- 
gious appliances ordained of God, is to bridge 
over the moral chasm, and by all means draw 
the children of men from the bad side to the good 
side of this moral gulf. To this end every thing 
has been done that infinite mercy can devise and 
do. Beyond the grave we have no encourage- 
ment to hope for a change of moral condition. 
Into whatever form our character ripens in this 
life in that form we remain fixed forever. " He 
that is unjust, let him be unjust still. He that is 
righteous, let him be righteous still; he that is 
holy, let him be holy still; and he that is filthy, 



RETRIBUTION, 



let him be filthy still." That is the manifest 
meaning of the impassible gulf of separation be? 
tween the evil and the good in the spirit world. 

The rich man, therefore, by means of his love 
of the good things in his life time, has ripened 
into a form of character which must abide him 
forever, and from which the pure and the sancti- 
fied in glory must he forever separated by virtue 
of that moral repulsion which everywhere sun- 
ders discordant souls as by an impassible gulf. 
The text indicates the ground of the rich man's 
woe. It is impossible to conceive of a figure of 
speech that could more vividly portray the ut- 
most extreme of despair, than that put in the 
mouth of the rich man in Hell. " Send Lazarus 
that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and 
cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame." 
Abraham addresses him in accents of pity, but 
under an evident sense of impossibility. He 
knows that the two men are unchanged; that the 
happiness of the one, and the woe of the other, is 
due to what they are. The only thing that can 
mitigate the rich man's anguish, is to be some- 
thing that he is not, and now can not be. He 



RETBIBUTIOK. 97 

has now crossed the boundary line of probation, 
ripened into moral fixedness, which not even in- 
finite compassion can alter. lie is to-day what 
he was yesterday. Lazarus is to-day what lie 
was yesterday. The shuffling oil' the mortal coil 
has not changed their moral status. Yesterday 
Lazarus was as truly in possession of the trus 
riches as he is to-day. He experienced the beat- 
itude of that poverty that seals the beggar's title 
to tin- kingdom of Heaven. " Blessed be ye poor 
for yours is the kingdom of Heaven." Yesterday 
the rich man was spiritually as poor, as bankrupt 
of every tiling spiritually good as to-day. The 
only difference is that both are now stripped of 
all disguises, and are free disembodied spirits. 
Their moral affinities are not changed. These 
are now confirmed and fixed beyond the possi- 
bility of change. This is what Abraham means 
when he cites the rich man back, " son, remem- 
ber. " Over there Lazarus had what you now 
want, the lack of which makes all your woe. The 
deep well of salvation in his soul, was theni full 
of water, even while he lay at the gate of your 
earthly mansion, hungering for the crumbs of 



93 RETRIBUTION". 

your table, and accepting the surgery of the dogs 
that came and licked his sores as the only solace 
of his bodily pain. One drop of that water I 
know would now quench the fires that consume 
your peace. But you have no more relish for that 
now than when you were "clothed in purple and 
fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day." 
Remember how indignantly you then would have 
spurned oil offers of good from the loathsome 
beggar. He had then the good you now need as 
truly as he has it now. Then tie- well of salva- 
tion was as free to you as to him. You had no 
taste for those healing waters then. You have 
no more relish now than then for the water of 
life. I can not give that water to you. Lazarus 
can not. God, Himself, can not give it to you. 
God can not give the bread and water of life 1o 
any that do not hunger and thirst. You long for 
rest, but no more now than then do you hunger 
and thirst after right ousness which alone can 
satisfy the soul. " Blessed are they that do hun- 
ger and* thirst after righteousness, for they shall 
be filled." There i-; no more affinity between 
your soul and the good you need now than there 



UKTKIIH'TION, ll'.l 

was when in life you rolled in luxury. The mor- 
al gulf between you and Heaven is an impassible 

gulf. Oil an<l water can not be made to unite 
for lack of chemical affinity. Heaven and Hell, 
jlbr lack of spiritual affinity, are divided by a line 
of separation over which neither can pass, and 
which has been fitly styled an impassible gulf. It 
is not a gulf measured by space, but one meas- 
ured by the degree of moral repulsion, which 
proximity in space tends to intensify rather than 
overcome, and hence to tantalize, and augment 
the indignation and wrath, the tribulation and 
anguish of the lost soul forever. 

"Son, remember." Was there not an impassi- 
ble gulf between you and the beggar in the other 
world? The kingdom of Heaven in the fruition 
of which his soul now rejoices, was then within 
him as it is now. "As well might a camel go 
through a needle's eye," as for you then to enter 
into spiritual affinity with him, As you then 
coveted gold and silver on which the love of your 
heart was fixed for the sake of yourself, so now 
you covet the rest and peace that belong to him, 
for the Pake of vourself, Selfishness then, and 



100 RKTKIIHTIOX. 

selfishness now. separates your soul from all that 
is good. Then you dispised the humility of the 
beggar, now you envy his joys. Then you passed 
by on the other side while the dogs licked his 
sores as he lay at your gate. Now you would 
fain exchange all the purple and Hue linen of 
earth for one hoar of the rest thai belongsHo him. 
Then you feasted your body with luxuries, the 
very crumbs of which you grudgingly withheld 
from him. " Now he is comforted, but thou art. 
tormented." You were not changed in character, 
You are as you were. Reconstruction then, was 
possible; reconstruction now is impossible. All 
from what you are. 
•' Sou. rememl er." On this main thou 
my text. I must dwell a moment longer I efore 1 
close. Tlie faculty of memory of all the gifts of 
reason specially deserves our reverent r 
This pure back-ground of the soul, comes from 
our Creator's hand an immaculate blank, a spot- 
in. unwritten chart, but receptive of a 
tru • ungarbled record of all the deeds done in the 
body. No single thought, word < r di ■ I, evi r 
transpires that is not faithfully registered there- 



RETRIBUTION. 101 

in. So long as the soul remains a tenant of the 
body, its various faculties arc more or less de- 
pendent on the vital strength of the physical or- 
gans. The brain, which is the organ through 
which mind acts and its volitions arc- made cog- 
nizable,is subject to weakness, disorder and decay. 
'With weakness and decay of the brain, comes 
weakness of one or all the functions of the soul. 
The failure of memory is generally the first indi- 
cation of a disordered brain. So that we have 
no intimation either in scripture or reason that 
the soul will suffer the loss of any of its rational 
powers when emancipated from the trammels 
and weaknesses of the flesh. But the evidence is 
that it will rise out of the earthly house of its 
tabernacle with all its powers restored to their 
normal integrity, to reassert their spiritual free- 
dom and realize with susceptibilities consciously, 
untrammeled and exalted the full measure of 
spiritual retribution. 

Conceding this — conceding that memory un- 
clouded and clear, is to be reinstated in the soul 
in the spirit life, and to reproduce hour by hour, 
in a world without end, all the deeds done in the 



102 RETRIBUTION. 

body, with all the secret underlying motives that 

determine their good and their evil character, it 
is easy to understand the solemn import of the 
words of Abraham to Dives, ' l Son, remember." 

Memory will forever interpret all the mystery 
of your inconsolable anguish. 1 can not erase 
from that imperishable record a single line,or 
wipe out a single blot, (loci can not. You are 
suffering under the necessity which you yourself, 
pot God has willed. As He forewarned you by 
the mouth of his prophet, He has brought every 
work into judgment with every secret thing. 
Your deep damnation is not the vengeance of God. 
He is still a pitying and a merciful Father. The 
judgment seat of God, to which you have now 
come, is the tribunal of your own conscience; and 
the indictment to every count of which you now 
plead guilty, is the imperishable record of mem- 
ory, which record was written up by your own 
hands. No power can now efface from that rec- 
ord what you would gladly forget, and what, if it 
were possible to forget, would leave a blank that 
would mitigate all your woe. 

But what is the indictment to which Abraham 



RETRIBUTION. 103 

calls the rich man's attention. " Son, remem- 
ber." What? He makes no inventory of crirties 
of which he has been guilty; he doe& not charge 
him with extortion, with fraud, cruelty or din- 
honesty. He makes no mention of his cold neg- 
lect of the beggar, as if he desired to avoid tan- 
talizing his already inconsolable feelings. He 
barely cites a moral principle that lies below all 
external acts, and that determines the moral 
level of every man independently of all such 
acts. 

"Remember that thou in thy life time receiv- 
edst thy good things." That is, the tilings of the 
earthly life time are the only things that you 
considered good. You considered nothing good 
that did not have direct relation to your bodily 
sensuous life. Money was a good thing, and all 
the things that money can buy were good things. 
Your costly house with all its adornings, furni- 
ture, luxuries and splendors, was a good thing. 
Your purple and fine linen were good things; 
your well-stored larder, and the viands that 
pampered your life were good things. The flow- 
ers and fruits that abounded in your decorated 



104 RETRIBUTIONi 

garden were good things. The income of your 
farms, the rate per cent, on your stocks and 
mortgages, and the profits on your merchandise 
were good things. The glitter and. show of socie- 
ty, and the crouching obeisance that wealth with- 
out merit so often commands, were good things. 
" Thou, in thy life time, receivedst thy good 
things." There is no crime laid to his charge. 
There is no intimation that his earthly property 
was not the fruit of justifiable speculation. Such 
speculation as every honest man may embark in 
without tbe least harm to his soul. What, then, 
is the point that Abraham cites as the ground of 
the rich man's woe? " In thy life time thou re- 
ceivedst thy good things." The only good which 
the rich man ever conceived was material worldly 
good. He was probably a sadducee that ignored 
the soul and its immortal destiny altogether. Of 
course, in this life, he was wholly oblivious of 
possible good apart from the life of sense. But 
his relation to all that he ever valued as good is 
now forever sundered. While here on earth roll- 
ing in abundance, he said to himself, " I will pull 
down my barns and build greater, will there 



BETBIBUTION. 105 

hoard all my fruits and my goods, and will say 
to my soul, soul thou hast much goods laid up 
for many years, take thine case, cat, drink, and 
be merry." But God suddenly divorced bim 
from all the good things of his life time, saying 
to him, " thou fool, this night thy soul shall be 
required of thee, 1 ' naked, impoverished, shrivelled 
and bankrupt, he crosses the boundary of mor- 
tality, leaving behind all his good things, to wake 
up in despair, and to bear the voice of father 
Abraham saying, u son, remember that thou in 
thy life time receivedst thy good things." 

''A man's life consisteth not in the abundance 
of the things he possesseth. What doth it profit 
a man if he gain the whole world and lose his 
soul, or what shall a man give in exchange for 
his soul?" In this world the only possible good 
to him consisted in what he hah. In the realm 
of the unseen the only possible good consists in 
what be is. Now, I have nothing; what AM I ? 
The same sordid, selfish, spiritual bankrupt, for- 
ever repelled from God, and all goodness by the 
inherent elements of my own unregeUerated 
nature. 



10K RETRIBUTION. 

" And likewise Lazarus evil things." That is, 
they were evil things from your point of observa- 
tion. God did not pronounce them evil things. 
The spirit of your life contradicted the Divine 
judgment. God pronounced the highest benedic- 
tion on the lot of Lazarus; " blessed be ye poor 
for y.airs is the kingdom of Heaven; Messed are 
they that mourn: they that are persecuted for 
righteousness sake; blessed are they that^do hun- 
ger and thirst," nut after gold and silver, not af- 
ter purple and tine linen, not after sumptuous 
fare, hut " after righteousness." " Blessed arc 
the pure in heart," regardless of poverty, of rags, 
of sores and bodily sufferings, "for they shall see 
God." You saw nothing enviable in the lot of 
Lazarus, then. Then, as now, he had the true 
riches, the treasure in Heaven, compared with 
which all your good things were hut vanity and 
vexation of spirit. "Now he is comforted, and 
thou art tormented " by the necessary sequence 
of what he and you respectively aim:. 

The characters cited by the text and context, 
be it remembered, are representative characters. 
The moral elements that determined the desti- 



RETRIBUTION, 107 

ny of each of these will determine the destiny 
of us all. The rich man is an extreme type 
of all who receive their good things in their life 
lime, who deny God, deny retribution, deny im- 
mortality, and turn their hacks on all the provi- 
sions of Divine grace for the recovery of their 
souls from "the hist* of the flesh, the lust of the 
eye, and the pride of life," and the recasting of 
its moral temper in the mold and sympathy of 
the good and glorified. While Lazarus is an ex- 
treme type of the oppressed, the neglected and 
suffering, hut deserving poor, who lay up their 
treasures in Heaven, regarding themselves, " as 
strangers and pilgrims here on earth, ami who 
look for a better country — sven an heavenly." 

The end that awaited the one or the other of 
these representative characters, awaits us all. 
Our moral reeord is fast being written up in in- 
effaceable characters in the book of memory. 
Soon '' the books will be opened, and we shall he 
judged out of the things that are written in the 
books," and the behest will be heard by each of 
us — son, daughter, remember. how can any 
of us bear the exposure of what is there written ? 



1()8 retribution! 



The past of our history with all its dark stains of 
.-in is there inscribed, and if our future wen- to 
be immaculate and holy, we have no power to 
erase a line or a blot of our unholy past. The 
harvest of seed sown in the flesh, of which mem- 
ory will make me conscious forever and ever in a 
world without end, r must meet, " blessed thricl 
blessed be God who giveth us the victory through 
our Lord Jesus Christ." "The blood of JesZ 
Christ cleanseth from all sin " If memory magi 
nifies our sin, it at the same time magnifies ttaj 
riches of redeeming grace, and when we look at 
the ' hole of the pit from whence we are digged," 
and contrast the moral degredation from which 
we have escaped with the mighty love that raised 
us out of it, the contemplation will elevate every 
not:, of the song by which we hop,, to sing eter- 
nally the triumph of redemption, 
•' My faith looks up to th- 
Thou ham!) of Calvary '* 

Savior divine; 
Now hear me when I pray, 
Take all n away; 

let me from this day, 
wholly thin 



RETKIISl I'KiN. 1(1!' 

Iii the parable of Dives and Lazarus, what en- 
couragement is given to the rich man to hope for 
restoration; he is not spoken of as in a state of 
probation, and no hope of restoration is offered 
him. On this side the curtain of mortality, of- 
fered grace made a transition from Hell to Heav- 
en possible on conditions. Bui beyond the vail. 
no conditions of transition are spoken of, scrip- 
ture gives no intimation of a moral change in the- 
spirit land, and both scripture and reason teach 
that, without a moral change woe is inevitable. 

God forbid that I should set bounds to the pos- 
sibilities of Divine compassion. With God all 
things are possible. But my commission gives 
me no right to go beyond the valley and shadow 
of death, and promise restoration to the incor- 
rigibly lost. On the contrary, it is my duty to 
warn the sinner, that if he cross the boundary 
unsaved, he must go without hope, for the sen- 
tence is decreed. u He that is unjust, let him be 
unjust still; and he " which is 'filthy, let him be 
filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him be 
righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be 
holy still." 



j.10 CONSANGUINITY OF THE SAINTS, 



Consanguinity of the Saints. 



For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is 
in Heaven, the same is my brother and sister and moth- 
er.— Matthew XII : 50, 

Our Savior chooses the ties of consanguinity by 
which to unfold his relationship to his disciples. 
We can understand those ties. We need none to 
explain to us the spiritual nature of the tie that 
binds kindred hearts in these human relation- 
ships. They are so strong, so vital, so inaliena- 
ble, that we cannot consent to the thought of the 



CONSANGUINITY OF THE SAINTS. Ill 

sundering of them. When kindred die, the tie 
that binds our hearts to them is not broken, but 
strengthened. We love them more when we lay 
them in the grave than when in life they could 
respond to our acts of love. It is a spiritual bond, 
and the departed spirit has' lost nothing that re- 
lates to the tie. I love my mother, my father, 
all my deceased kindred more when I bury them 
out of my sight; than while they were with me. 
My faith in their immortality, and my memory 
of their lifetime, and the relation of that lifetime 
to my happiness, intensify the bond that united 
us in life. The love of kindred is an undying in- 
stinct that even death itself cannot abate. And 
if indispensable to the good of our present life, it 
is quite natural that we should anticipate the 
same source of happiness in the spirit life. That 
which is indispensable to the joy of this life, how 
can it be dispensed with in the higher life? If I 
do not know and identify my kindred in Heaven 
as I know them here, how can I escape there the 
solitude and dreadful desolation of one here, 
whose life is made vacant by the desertion of all 
his kindred?^ This is a question full of interest, 



112 CONSANGUINITY OF THE SAINTS. 

and to some Christian hearts of painful anxiety. 
Shall I never again see the sweet face of my 
mother, of my sister and brother. They have 
gone to the spirit land. The lineaments by 
which they were identified here are dissolved in 
the graves — how am* I to identity them in the 
better land? If not at all, what is to atone for 
my disappointment, since the recognition of kin- 
dred is so indispensable to my happiness here? 

Some thoughts bearing on this very interesting 
question are what I have promised at this time. 

On the occasion that gave rise to the words of 
the text, while Jesus was addressing the people, 
his mother and his natural brothers stood with- 
out desiring to speak with him. Nobody thinks 
that Jesus was oblivious of the tie of natural af- 
fection, or of the courtesies which that tie always 
imposes on a son and a brother; and yet the an- 
swer that he made would seem on the surface of 
the interview to imply at least indifference to the 
claims of his mother and his brothers. His con- 
duct was unlike that of most dutiful children to- 
ward their nearest kindred, and we need to look 
below the surface to find the true apology for con- 



CONSANGUINITY OF THH SAINTS. J US 

duct so unique and singular; Instead of respond- 
ing promptly to the call, and addressing special 

attention to his mother, lie asks the surprising 
question: " Who is my mother, and who are my 
brethren?" And while those who heard him no 
doubt stood amazed at a question so unexpected, 
he turned to his disciples — those who had left all 
to follow him, who loved and obeyed him at the 
sacrifice of every selfish desire and purpose, and 
who found in him complete blessedness — and 
stretching forth his hand to them he said: " Be- 
hold my mother and my brethren: For whoso- 
ever doeth the will of my Father which is in 
Heaven, the same is my brother and sister and 
mother." The answer is unique, but profound, 
and opens to our mind the real genius of the 
Christian religion, and an easy solution of the 
question of personal recognition in the future 
state. First it gives us the key to the nature of 
religion itself, si.:ce it puts it under the law of 
consanguinity. Everybody can understand that. 
If the law that binds children of the same family 
to each other and to their mother cannot be ana- 
lyzed and explained philosophically, it can be 



114 CONSANGUINITY OF THE SAINTS. 

known experimentally by every child. There is 
a power in the relationship that all feel, a power 
that controls the heart and that effects the hap- 
piness of every person; a power that we all know 
by experience. If anybody asks you why you 
love your mother better than any other woman, 
you will not explain it by saying she is wiser, 
better, more beautiful or affectionate than any 
other woman; but you will answer by saving she 
is your mother, and for that reason she te to you 
superior to all others. No other can fill the place 
in your heart that she fills, and the reason is, she 
is your mother. And other ties of consanguinity 
can be explained only in the same way. We love 
brothers, sisters, mother by a law inherent in the 
relationship. We know it by experience, not by 
hearsay; not by information as we know other 
things; we know it by responses of love natural 
to the tie of blood, that are felt and that effect 
our hearts. The family relation is ordained for 
felicity; perfectly organized, complete in its de- 
tails, it is the fittest type of heavenly blessedness. 
Jesus teaches us in the text that religion is 
founded in the same law; that the principle of 



.CONSANGUINITY OF THE SAINTB, lift 

Jove that makes home blessed to all members of 
an affectionate family, makes Heaven blessed to 
all pure souls that do the will of our Father in 
Heaven. Love is one principle: it binds mother 
and child by an unselfish tie of pure love. It 
binds the hearts of those who do the will of God 
by taking on the spirit and copying the virtues 
of Christ, by the same spiritual tie. Love is not 
one thing in the earthly home and another thing 
in the celestial glory, What makes home truly 
blessed in the limitations of time and sense makes 
Heaven blessed amid conditions that are free 
from all the limitations of time and sense. Re- 
ligion, then, true loyalty of heart to God, true 
and sincere love to the Savior, is consanguinity, 
The same law of love that makes the tie of kin- 
dred here a life-long tie of affection, indispensa- 
ble to earthly happiness, makes the tie of all 
hearts in the great family of the redeemed in 
Heaven. There will be no strangers there, 
Whatever be the form of existence, we are assured 
that it will he spiritual, and in no sense carnal, 
and that all will belong to one family. All will 
be as the angels of God. There will be no mar- 



J16 CONSANGUINITY OF THE saints. . 

rying or giving in marriage. Human relation* 
phips will all be lost in the enlarged relationships 
of the one great family, of which God is Father, 
Christ is Brother; to whom all are united by the 
same bond that here connect? the hearts of moth* 
sters, brothers in the earthly family. Who 
is my mother? in ffeaven that question will be 
answered as Jesus answered it in tin- text, "She 
that <Ui ill the will of m\ Father in Heaven, 
She," says Jesus, ( 'is my mother." lie takes the 
place of every loyal mother's sou. Th ■ tie of love 
between him and every sanctified mother can be 
known only as the tie of consanguinity between 
mother and son in Heaven. He fills that rela. 
fcion, spiritually, to every mother that do 
will of the Father. Then, if ever} moth< r is His 
mother, every child is His brothel' or sister, ami 
all are members of one family. All in the greal 
family ot'Heaven are bound together by a bond, 
tiie sweetness and the ten icity of which we 
foretaste of in the consanguinity here in our 
earthly relations, .My conclusion from these, 
thoughts is, that the happiness of Heaven will he 
Independent of all the ties of e;:rth : Tie | 



CONSANGUINITY OF THE (SAINTS. 117 

love for kindred, on which our happiness here 
depends, will all he absorbed and swallowed up 
in the infinite ocean of love that constitutes the 
glory of Heaven. Shall we know each other there? 
It may be. I cannot answer yea or nay to thie 
question. I can only say that happiness there, 
either to us or to our kindred, depends not on 
that question. If we do the will of Grod, we are 
mother, sister and brother to Christ; we are 
mother, sister, brother to each other. The spirit 
of every mother will be just as dear to me as the 
spirit of my own sainted mother. Love there 
rests not on motherhood here below, but on per- 
fect likeness of spirit to God above. That like- 
ness fills all the conditions that in the earthly 
state connect loving hearts by family ties. We 
think of recognizing kindred in Heaven, because 
that recognition makes us so happy here. All 
are kindred there. Everybody there is brother, 
sister and mother. I shall see a mother's face in 
every glorified mother. The joy I anticipate in 
seeing my natural mother there, I shall ej^peri- 
ence in recognizing each pure spirit of whom 
Christ will confess sonship. 



J.18 CONSANGUINITY OK THE SAINTS. 

While wo remain in the body we must retain 
the love of the earthly family tie. It is indis- 
pensable to our happiness. We must think of 
the departed spirit as our kindred. Our finite 
"limitations here make this the only condition of 
our present happiness. And the anticipation of 
meeting departed friends in Heaven is also a high 
condition of our present joy. But how will our 
joy, when we arrive in Heaven, exceed all present 
anticipations, on finding everybody there our 
kindred? On finding there all boundary lines 
that here circumscribe the individual family ob- 
literated; where we shall be members of one 
family, wherein all are kindred t^ ties of love 
and attachment, of which earthly ties are but a 
faint resemblance. Ties never to be sundered. 
which unite the whole family of Heaven in an 
eternal union of unalloyed, ever-increasing, ever- 
expanding glory and blessedness. This concep- 
tion of the relationships of Heaven gives us the 
best idea of the Church on earth — of its true im- 
port,/»f what it is designed to be, of what it 
should be. It is designed to be but an enlarge- 
ment of the earthly family, bound together by 



CONSANGUINITY OF THE SAINTS. 119 

the same strong tie of consanguinity that con- 
nects the hearts of children to parents, and to 
each other. It is the incipient life of the general 
assembly and church of the first born which are 
written in Heaven — an antepast of the glorified 
state above. Brother, sister, in this sacred anion 
of Christian hearts, under a covenant of love to 
Christ and to each other, is not an empty name. 
It means, or is designed to mean, all that Jesus 
expressed when he said: "They that do the will 
of the Father, the same are my brother and sister 
and mother." Churches differently organized are 
but separate families of one great brotherhood. 
In Heaven, churches, like families, will lose their 
distinctive lines of separation. The ties that bind 
individuals into distinct denominations here will 
be absorbed in the broad bond of" the church of 
the first born which are written in Heaven." The 
only condition of that bond is the doing of the 
will of our heavenly Father. That condition ful- 
filled admits to the fellowship of the Saints, 
whether on earth or in Heaven, and gives to that 
fellowship all the meaning that belongs to broth- 
er, sister and mother in the family. When we 



120 CONSANGUINITY OF THE SAINTS. 

come into this Christian relation we bring the tie 
of love that connects kindred of the same family. 
And when we depart to the better land we shall 
find all earthly limitations lost in the boundless 
beatitudes of the heavenly glory, where Christ, of 
whom the whole family in earth and Heaven is 
named, will be the central sun. 

This view of the subject justifies the conclusions 
that earthly relationships, like all earthly inher- 
itances, are temporary; that we go to Heaven not 
as families to be reinstated in our earthly do- 
mestic life, but to enter on the higher life, free 
from all limitations of earth, with love and joy of 
which present domestic love and joy are but a 
foretaste: that we leave behind all our family 
limitations, and carry with us only the capacity 
of love which sweetened the family relation here, 
and which will be expanded there according to 
the enlarged sphere which it will embrace. 

How precious is the religion that provides, and 
puts within the grasp of our faith a state of being 
founded in the law of love that sweetens all the 
joys of our earthly life, and yet so vastly superior 
to all we experience here as to supersede all ne- 



CONSANGUINITY OF Till'. SAINTS. 1 2 1 

Ijeesity of the limitations so needful to our present 
joy, and to guarantee to us an eternity of fruition 
among an innumerable company of the redeemed 
out of all kindreds of earth, who will truly he 
brother, sister and mother to us in the highesl 
and most enduring sense of those relations. And 
how easy the terms on which this high inherit- 
ance is promised: '' He that doeth the will of 
my Father which is in Heaven, the; same," says 
Jesus, "is my mother and sister and brother." 
The bystanders who had learned to know of His 
divine origin and power, no doubt indulged a 
feeling of envy for Mary, the mother of Jesus, 
and her other sons, who were his natural broth- 
ers. It was to divert their minds from this lower 
relationship to his earthly kindred and fix them 
on the possibility of the higher, more blessed and 
more permanent relation arising from moral like- 
ness to the will of God. As a ground of promise, 
this supersedes all ties of consanguinity, and ele- 
vates the humblest disciple to a rank in that 
royal family of which God is Father and Christ 
the elder Brother. Oh how high the incentive to 
be and to do all that the will of our heavenly 



122 CONSANGUINITY OF THE SAINTS. 

Father requires us to be and to do! The inherit- 
ance is but a step before us. The time is short. 
Are we doing the will of our Father in heaven? 
On that question must turn the decision of our 
great future. How can we afford to withhold our 
best affections from One thus related to all who 
give Him their hearts, and thus become sons and 
daughters of the Lord Almighty? 



A HBW HEAVKN AND A NEW EARTH j 12^ 



A New Heaven and a N< k >v 
Earth. 



And I saw a new Heaven and a new earth, for felie first 
Heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there 
Was no more sea, 

And I, John, saw the Holy City new Jerusalem com- 
Bag down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride 
adorned for her husband, 

And I heard a great voice out of Heaven, saying, be-. 
hold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will 
dwell with them and they shall be His people, and God 
Himself will be with them ami be their God, 

And G id shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and 
there shall he no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, 
neither shall there be any more pain; for the former 
things are passed away, — Revelation XXI; 1 t° 4, 



124 A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH, 

This is the most graphic and highly wrought 
of all poetic figures. All attempts at interpreta- 
tion that undertake to deal with the drapery of 
the picture, and to hold it forth as anything more 
than the sign of great spiritual facts, only mys- 
tify its glorious import, rob it of its intrinsic 
beauty, and cheat the soul of that lofty inspira- 
tion which its true signification is designed to 
impart, 

The Divine revelator borne aloft upon the 
mount of prophetic vision, filled to overflowing 
with the experience of that new life, the achieve* 
merits of which culminate in the conquests of the 
soul over the world, the fiesh and the devil, and 
in full realization of all that which we call Heav- 
en; breaks out in the language of the text, and 
under imagery the most grand and soul inspiring 
winch it is possible for poetry itself to conceives 
He portrays the unutterable blessedness of th&t 
new life which is the inheritance of all the re- 
deemed and sanctified. If there be any reality 
in the things revealed in the Bible, the renewed 
life of the soul under a divine inspiration is the 
most real of all things else, It is stvjed the new 



A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH. L25 

birth. " The soul renewed in the image of II in » 
that created it." The attainment to that Lofty 
experience wherein "old things have passed 
away, and behold, all things have become new." 
If this be not a true conception, and if the dis- 
tinction between souls thus renewed, and spirit- 
ually inspired, and those unrenewed and un- 
sanctified, be not a real distinction, then tin Bi- 
ble is the most unmeaning and unintelligible of 
all books. The text is easy of interpretation un- 
der the conception of Heaven as consisting in the 
spiritual attainments of the soul divinely trans- 
formed. " I saw a new Heaven and a new earth, 
for the first Heaven and the first earth were 
passed away and there was no more sea." lie- 
fore, I saw only the old Heaven and the old 
earth. Life found all its meaning in objects gf 
sense, all its value in the values of property, all 
its pleasures in sensuous enjoyments, all its 
hopes in anticipated wealth, worldly honor, or 
worldly power. If I thought of Heaven, I thought 
of it as a far off country, as a walled city located 
in space, built out of matter and inhabited by 
beings of sense, like unto the inhabitants of earth, 



126 A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH. 

attainable only by a long pilgrimage, a journey 
to some remote planet in the skies. Now. says 
the revelator: " I saw a new Heaven and a new 
earth. Old things have passed away, and behojd, 
all things have become new/' Now I see the 
hand-writing of God everywhere on all the works 
of creation. The sun, the moon, and the stars, 
the eart!) with its mighty oceans and continents, 
its islands and lakes, its mountains and valleys, 
its summer verdure aid its wintry frosts, are a 
volume of God's communications to the spiritual 
side of man's nature. 1 read in the strength of 
the mountains of the omnipotent strength of God 
as the fortress of the soul against all the assaults 
of Satan and of sin; I read in the beauty of the 
violet, of "the beauty of holiness," and in the 
fragrance of the rose, of the divine aroma of that 
charity that "suffereth long and is kind," re- 
vealing itself in all manner of good works. I 
read in the bountiful harvest of the overflowing 
gOQjiness of God who, out of the infinite store- 
house of His grace supplies the soul with im- 
mortal good. I read in the unfathomable depth 
and boundless expanse of the ocean of the inter- 



A NEW HEAVEN WD \ NEW EARTH. 127 

painable duration and exhaustless capacities of 

the soul. I read in all God's great and mighty 
works, of His infinite grace and goodness to the 

soul. "I see a new Heaven and a new earth 
wherein dwelleth righteousness." 

" And there was no more sea." The billowy 
ocean is of all things else the must perfect type 
of the carnally minded, selfish, unregenerated 
man. " Like the troubled sea that cannot rest. 
but castethup mire and dirt,"' so his sensuous lite 
which strives only after the things that perish 
with their using, is an ocean of uncertainty, a sea 
of adverse currents and tempestuous winds that 
perpetually lash and tire and toss him upon the 
uneven surface of adventure, wherein he finds no 
rest for the sole of his foot. Oh for some solid 
ground, some fixed anchorage for the soul that 
secures it from all the perils and disasters of this 
contradictory world. He who spake to the war- 
ring elements, saying, " peace be still," and by a 
word, commanded a calm, thus filling the souls of 
the despairing disciples with security and joy, 
holds in his hands all the forces that disturb the 
peace of our souls and make our life like the 
• 



128 A NEW HEAVEN AXD A NEW EARTH. 

troubled sea, Faith in Him removes all moun- 
tains, settles all seas, and fills our soul with pro- 
pitious winds. " And there was no more sea." 
No more pounding upon the rocks of sin, no more 
lashing by the surges of remorse, no more drown- 
ing, no more shipwreck of the soul, for it has 
found and entered into the harbor of safety. 

" And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusa- 
lem, coming down from God out of Heaven pre- 
pared as a bride adorned for her husband." The 
Holy City, the New Jerusalem, is here conceived 
of not as a habitation located in the far off re- 
gions of space to which we are to go after we die, 
but as a movable thing coming down to us while 
we live. The mode of expression here employed 
by the revelator, is an accommodation of lan- 
guage to the common conception of men. The 
rising and setting of the sun is not the language 
of fact, for the sun never rises nor sets, but is sta- 
tionary, while the rolling of the earth makes its 
relative direction now in the east, now in the 
zenith, and now in the west. God is conceived 
of as having a local habitation above the earth, 
and that conception accords with His ubiquity, 



A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH. 129 

with the fact that He is everywhere, for what is 
upward in our conception aims at every point in 
the entire circumference of the heavens in the 
space of twenty-four hours. The rain always de- 
scends, but its absolute direction in space changes 
every moment of time. Every approach toward 
the earth is a descent, but lines of descent are 
never parallel, but infinitely various in direction. 
" So every good gift and every perfect gift Cometh 
down from the Father of Light." The Holy 
Spirit descendeth like the showers that watereth 
the earth. It is always conceived of in the Bible 
as an outpouring, or as a sprinkling like the dew 
from Heaven coming down from above. Here 
the revelator sees Heaven itself with all its unut- 
terable glory coming down from God out of 
Heaven out of the regions above us. Instead of 
waiting to die, and then by a long pilgrimage, 
traversing illimitable space above us to get to the 
Holy City, the New Jerusalem, all the spiritual 
glory and blessedness portrayed under this most 
beautiful figure, is seen coming down to us out of 
Heaven. The Celestial city itself is brought 
down to earth. The new life of the soul, the in- 



L30 A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH. 

spiration of (rod in the human breast, the in- 
dwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the consequent 

vict ,y over sin thus achieved, is all then' is of 
Heaven. With tins blessed experience, Heaven, 
with all its joys and triumphs, is already at- 
tained. When tin' love <>f God is consciously 
and completely shed abroad in the soul, then the 
Holy city, the New Jerusalem, has actually come 
down to it out of Heaven, and it has entered 
upon the exact enjoyment of that which is prom- 
ised as the reward of righteousness forever and 
ever. 

•"And I. John, saw the Holy city, New Jerusar 
leni. coming down from God prepared as a bride 
adorned for her husband." This conception of 
the life of God in the sold has no adequate rep- 
resentative among all the precious things of com- 
merce. "The gold and the crystal cannot equal 
it. no mention shall lie made of coral or of pearls, 
for 'the price of it is above rubies, the topaz of 
Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither -ball it he 
valued with pure gold." There is no beauty, no 
value, no attractiveness among all the precious 
things of earth that can exalt them into a just 



: AVION AM) A MOW 10 \i: I'll 



comparison with the hew life. Only the bride 
adorned with those graces of character thai quali- 
ty her to honor the name and beatify the home 
of a worthy husband, can tipify the priceless 
boon of the New Jerusalem, the Holy city, com- 
ing down from God out of Heaven. On tins ob- 
ject, the value of which disdains all comparison 
wilh -old, (ii- the thing's that gold can buy, the 
poet fixes his mind, and the figure finds ample 
room for the beauty, the loveliness, and the grace 
of Heaven to culminate, There is bul one senti- 
ment in the human breast about a 1 ride adorned 
for her husband, adorned with the grace of a con- 
fiding heart, a pure devotion, and a love that no 
reverses can abate, and that is the sentiment of 
admiration. The life of holiness, of purity, of 
love unfeigned and of unreserved consecration to 
duty, is as the bride a lorned for her husband — the 
acquisition of unalloyed good. 

u And I heard a great voice out of Heaven say- 
ing, behold the tabernacle of God is with men, 
and He will dwell with them, and they shall be 
His people, and God Himself shall be with them 
and be their God," The highest idea of spiritual 



132 A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH. 

blessedness, either now or hereafter, consists in 
near approach to God. The most joyful experi- 
ence of the devout soul arises from personal in- 
timacy with God. Our highest hope of Heaven 
is the hope of seeing God, and of knowing more 
and more of His unfathomable wisdom and good- 
ness. In all highest states of religious experi- 
ence in the individual soul, and in the commu- 
nity, when all the people turn to prayer, to re- 
pentance and to salvation, when all hearts melt 
together in love, and when tears of religiQus joy 
moisten all eyes, then it is that earth becomes 
most like Heaven, for then it is that God is con- 
sciously near. The prayer of all Christian hearts 
that desire a revival of pure religion is. that God 
will come down, manifest His gracious presence, 
and take up His abode in the midst of His pec 
pie. Then it is they sing, " Nearer my God to 
Thee, nearer .to Thee, though it he a cross that 
raiseth me, this all my song shall be, nearer mv 
God to Thee, nearer to Thee." 

" And I heard a great voice out of Heaven say- 
ing, behold the tabernacle of God is with men." 
The "Holy city, the New Jerusalem," wherein 



A NEW HEAVEN AM) A NEW EARTH, 1.'!.'! 

God eternally dwells, has conic down to earth, 
and its foundationals fixed in the hearts of men. 
" Behold the kingdom of God is within you, the 
tabernacle of God is with men, and lie will dwell 
with them, and they shall he His people, and 
God Himself shall be with them, and be their 
God." Oh the glorious advent prayed for by the 
devout of all ages, desired and hoped for by the 
Church universal. " When, oh when, shall the 
coming of the Son of Man be?" The revelator 
flying aloft upon the wings of inspiration, hears 
a great voice out of Heaven, which answers the 
anxious inquiry : behold the tabernacle of God 
is already with men, and He will dwell with 
them and be their God. 

"And God shall wipe away all tears from their 
eyes." Don't let us wait till we get beyond the 
valley of the shadow of death before we give God 
a chance to wipe away the tears from our eyes. 
He is here ready and willing to do it now. Did 
you ever take into your arms a broken-hearted 
child crushed with grief and fear, and sorrow, 
and with your own napkin wipe away the tears, 
and with words of comfort soothe the grief of 



J-O* A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH. 

your sorrow-stricken child? This, more than 
anything else that man can do, is like God. 
Tears are all right. God does not try to prevent 
theirjow. For the best of reasons, He Himself, 
breaks up the fountain within us and causes it 
to overflow. But with His own hand He wipes 
away the tears that His mysterious providence 
has caused. Your child is a lifeless corpse, love- 
ly, joyous, and promising in life, it now lies cold 
in death. Your head has become waters, and 
your eyes a fountain of tears; but if your heart 
be tempered with faith, God can wipe away all 
your tears, and fill your soul with divine conso- 
lation. If the tabernacle of God is consciously 
with you, if you are His child, and He is your 
God, He can interpret the dark mystery and fill 
you with joy, even in the midst of your deep sor- 
row, your child is a lifeless corpse, an angel 
was wanted in Heaven, she has laid off her mor- 
tal coil to ' accept an immortal commission in 
glory, she can not come back to you, but you will 
soon go to her. " I am the resurrection and the 
life, he that believeth in Me shall never die." 
Dry your tears, I am with you, I will never for- ' 



A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EAKTII. 135 

sake you. For your child to die is infinite gain 
for her. She was sweet and lovely lure in the 
body, and on that very account all the more ob- 
noxious to temptation and danger. The Devil 
prepares his snares with most adroitness for such 
victims, he loves a shining mark. She is now 
beyond his reach, where God is wiping all tears 
from her eyes. 

"And there shall be no more death." Is this 
prophecy fulfilled here, on this side the curtain 
of mortality? Is this blessed assurance meant 
for dying humanity here in this vale of tears? 
Oh, yes. For what else is our religion valuable 
but to -give us complete victory over our last great 
enemy — death. If our hope be not built on this 
divine assurance, then surely it is built upon the 
sand. Christianity has done nothing for man, it 
is the most shadowy and transparent of all delu- 
sions if it have not brought life and immortality 
to light. If it be a true telescope revealing the 
solid realities of which all its glorious imagery is 
but a picture, then welcome infirmity. It is but 
the loosening of the keys that hold together this 
fleshly prison house in which our immortal spir- 



136 A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH. 

its are bound, and the index of its approaching 
exit and emancipation into the freedom of a mora 
pure and an immortal life. With the man who 
walks by faith and not by sight, death is but the 
rot of his weary, aching, dying body, ami the 
complete realization of immortality and eternal 
life. "Oh death, where is thy sting; oh grave, 
where is the victory? Blessed be God who giveth 
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 

And there shall he no more death, neither sor- 
row, nor crying; neither shall there he any more 
pain, for the former things are passed away." 
Such is the promised victory of the Christian's 
faith. Such the culminating glory of the new 
life of the soul that walks by faith. But is not 
this earthly life of ours truly styled a vale of 
tears? A life of sorrow, of trial, of sickness and 
of pain? Oh. yes. we make it such just in pro- 
portion as we live in the world of sense, live at a 
distance from God, and find the ends of our being 
in objects of sight. Those objects always disap- 
point us. The world betrays our trust on every 
hand. Friends die, youth and beauty fade, 
riches take wings and fly away, satiety and sick- 



V \K\V HEAVES AM) A MOW ICAKTM. 137 

ness convert luxuries into loathing, the excite- 
ments of pleasure tire us out, and become a ter- 
ror to our exhausted spirits. The world is full 
P trouble, sorrow, crying and pain. And unless 
God has provided a sovereign panacea for all our 
woe there is nothing in prospect for us hut black 
despair. " To he carnally minded, is death" To 
the sensuous, selfish, worldly minded, unbeliev- 
ing man, this life is truly a living death. " But 
to he spiritually minded is life and peace." The 
behest of Christianity is " rejoice ever more." 
This is the point at which religion becomes a 
miracle. Here comes in its divine its superna- 
tural value. "To be spiritually minded is life 
and peace," despite affliction, sorrow, and pain. 
P And there shall be no more death, neithi 
row nor crying; neither shall there lie any more 
pain." Infidelity croaks and fattens pver the 
failure of our religion to make us happy. It bor- 
rows its most telling arguments from our fear, 
our despondency, our sorrow and mourning. The 
Christian who can brave all the ills, and calami- 
ties of his human life with a cheerful heart, and 
who can smile at the approach of death, needs 



138 A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH. 

no argument in justification of his religion. With 
Him there is no more de.ath, neither sorrow nor 
crying; neither is there any more pain, for tM 
former things are passed away. 



Z^t 



JNTKRNAL EVIDENCES, |.39 



INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 



For I know that my Ret lee in or liveth. — Job XIX : i'5. 

This is one of the hold and positive utterances 
of faith, that power of intuition which arrives at 
conclusions, and which settles the convictions of 
the soul independently of the external evidences 
of truth. The religion of the Bible pre-supposes 
spiritual communication between the Supreme, 
everywhere present, Divine spirit, and the hu- 
man spirit. It pre-supposes that the humble, 
confiding,' dutiful worshiper, who desires and 
seeks divine light and guidance, is brought ha- 
bitually into contact and communion with the 



140 INTERNAL EVIDENCES, 

God he worships in a spiritual way, and that 
through this unseen channel of communication 
he is made to know the mind of God toward him- 
self, made to know his own spiritual status, to 
understand the wants of his own soul, to see the 
proper and only adequate supply of those wants, 
made to see in what line of life and duty the true 
interest of the soul lies, and enabled to settle the 
balances of the moral life in such a way as to 
have always a conscience void of offence toward 
God and toward men. This was the case with 
the patriarch Job, living in that early period, 
when life and immortality, afterwards brought to 
light in the Gospel, was but dimly shadowed 
forth to the faith of the few who walked with 
God, the few whose souls were illumined with 
the light divine, he experienced those ebbings 
and Sowings of faith incident to the darkness 
that surrounded him, and natural enough, amid 
the temptations and trials, the afflictions and 
sufferings with which his cup 'of life was ever- 
more filled. At one time, in despondency and 
doubt, and fear, he breaks out in the language of 
complaint: "Man that is born of woman is a 



INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 141 

few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth 
like a flower and is cut down; he fleet!) also as a 
shadow and continueth not. There is hope of a 
tree if it be cut down, that it will sprout again. 
But man dieth and wasteth away; yea. man 
giveth up the ghost, and where is he? And then 
looking into the darkness of the tomb he raiseth 
the earnest inquiry, if a man die shall he live 
again?" 

Then again, rising in the confidence of inspired 
hope, the light divine shining within his soul, and 
the revelations of immortality and eternal life 
being made clear to his faith, he exclaims in tri- 
umph: "I know that my Redeemer liveth and 
that He shall stand at the latter day upon the 
earth." 

The subject indicated by the text, and which 
has given rise to these introductory reflections 
inclines me to a further consideration of some of 
the internal evidences of the divine authenticity 
of the Christian religion. 

The question to be answered, is how do I know 
that my Redeemer liveth? Preliminary to this, 
however, there is another question to be settled. 



142 INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 

on the right solution of which depends all cor- 
rect results of the inquiry. It is this: 

Am I in need of a Redeemer? Am I in need 
of anything? Is my soul satisfied in itself? Is 
it independent in its life? Self-existent? Self- 
supporting? Or is it dependent for its life and 
for the attainment of its true end upon something 
out of itself ? I assume that my soul, and that 
the soul <»f every human being is in want, that it 
is dependent upon a good external to itself Hav- 
ing made out this proposition, I will then inquire 
what it is that the human soul needs, and see if 
we can find the answering good for the supply of 
our spiritual want. 

That the human soul is not complete in itself, 
that its life and perfection is dependent on some- 
thing out of itself, I shall argue first, from the 
analogies of nature, and secondly, from the reve- 
lations of consciousness. 

When we look into the world of nature, all na- 
ture, organic and inorganic, into the world of 
life, and the world of inert matter, we find a uni- 
versal law of interdependencies. Every individ- 
ual existence, every function of all living organ- 



INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 143 

isms, and every power in nature, has its correla- 
tive object. Nothing can realize the end for 
which it was created alone. The stomach was 
made for bread, and without it is inopperative 
and powerless. The eye was made for light, and 
without light, its necessary correlative, the eye is 
blind and useless. The ear was made to realize 
a certain result which we call sound, but that re- 
sult is dependent upon certain nice adjustments 
of the elements foreign to the ear itself. How- 
ever perfect its organism it can not attain the re- 
sult of sound alone. Separated from the air, in 
a vacuum, where it can have no contact with at- 
mospheric vibration, it is stone deaf. The lungs 
of all living things are so correlative to the air 
that instant death ensues when atmospheric air 
is excluded. The seed planted in congenial soil 
bursts its shell and gives birth to the shooting 
plant in response to the correlative powers about 
it, the heat of the sun, the moisture of rain, and 
the nutriment of the fertilized earth. And this 
is true every where in the world of life. Every 
living thing is dependent every moment of its 
being on a good out of itself, upon supplies and 



144 I.VTERNAL EVIDENCES. 

powers external to itself, but yet precisely ad- 
justed to its wants and made indispensable to the 
perfection of its being and the fulfillment of its 
appointed end. The same law pervades inor- 
ganic nature. Neither pole of the galvanic bat- 
tery alone is able to beget any of the electric 
phenomena. Each pule demands the other, and 
it is only by yielding to this demand and con- 
necting the two by some conducting medium that 
results are attained. To this law of correlation, 
to this principle of action and reaction, and to 
this alone, is due all the sublimity of the thunder- 
storm, and all tin- mystery of the electric tele- 
graph. The mountain is held to its firm base 
from a.^rc to age by a power not its own, ami the 
earth with all the planets of all celestial systemSj 
travel their exact and ceaseless round, guided in 
their course and saved every moment from con- 
fusion and chaos by powers brought to bear upon 
them from without, and on which they must for- 
ever depend. Nothing in the created universe is 
made to subsist alone. Everything belongs to a 
system divinely ordained in which mutual inter- 
dependence is the universal law. 



INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 145 

Thus far, there is no controversy, these state- 
ments accord with the plainest teachings of phil- 
osophy, and are received as admitted proposi- 
tions by all intelligent mi mis. 

Is it probable now that this universal law is 
limited. to the world of matter? Shu1 your eyes 
to the Bible and to human experience, and look 
simply and alone into the volume of nature. 
Read the law of interdependences there written, 
and ask yourself the question whether it is proba- 
ble that this law is limited to material things and 
to this earthly life. It' the great Architect of na- 
ture, and author of our present being, has made 
such nice adjustments of means to ends in the 
order of visible things, is it fair to conclude that 
He has left the soul unprovided for, or that He 
has ordained for it a life of independence? If 
the infant horn to the nourishing breast as the 
only condition of its earthly life, must he borne 
in its mother's arms and lean on its mother's 
care through all its tender years, and when it has 
attained its maturest strength must still depend 
for life on the bounties of nature, have we any 
right to conclude that the soul can live alone, 



146 INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 

that it can find in its own resources the aliment 
it needs, or that it can attain perfection and 
bli.-s, without the aid of some power out of and 
above itself? Would this be in keeping with the 
nature of things as God has ordained them? 
Would it accord with His own wise, beneficent 
and bountiful economy? If He be a kind Father 
in things pertaining to this life, providing for all 
living things their meat in due season, what right 
have we to imagine that in the realm of spirit, 
He is any the less a Father, or any the less will- 
ing to provide things better and more bountiful 
for the soul. 

But if any are skeptical about the wants of the 
soul, reasoning from the analogies of nature, let 
us inquire in the sphere of human consciousness. 
If in the volume of nature we fail to see symbol- 
ized our own spiritual weakness and dependence, 
let us look for a moment into the volume of hu- 
man experience. 

When we do this, we find at once that the 
whole outer world in the respect in which Ave 
have been considering it, is but the symbol of a 
more real system of interdependence and corrcla- 



INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 147 

tion in the spiritual world. We find one pre- 
vailing universally acknowledged fact of spiritual 
want, a fact inseparable from human nature, as 
truly so as hunger is inseparable from the body. 
We find that the soul clamors for its correlative 
good as really as the stomach clamors for bread; 
as really as the eye demands light in order that 
it may perform its appointed functions; as really 
as the lungs demand the air we breathe. We 
find that the soul of man everywhere, in all na- 
tions, in all states of civilization, under all sys- 
tems of religious faith, evermore demands some 
correlative object on which to rest, some satisfy- 
ing portion on which it may find its equilibrium 
and be at peace. As truly as the needle seeks 
the pole so truly does the soul of man seek some 
object of desire, some supply of its acknowledged 
want out of itself, as truly as the heart of man 
seeks alliance with the maid of his love, so truly 
does the soul of man seek alliance with some 
spiritual correlative, some satisfying good exter- 
nal to itself, yet evermore in sympathy with it. 
This want is a universal want, as universal as is 
the law of hunger or any other of the bodilv de- 



148 INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 

sires; and it is as uniformly the same in all men 
as is the sense of hunger. All men hunger and 
thirst alike. All men do not seek to satisfy their 
bodily wants in the same way. What is food to 
one man may he poison to another, what is luxu- 
ry to one tribe or nation of men, may be a loath- 
ing to another. But the sense of hunger is the 
same in all, and the desire for some sort of food 
as the correlative of hunger is universally the 
same. 

Just so whim we come up into tin; realm of the 
soul. All men feel a yearning want in their spir- 
itual being. All men have a wounded conscience. 
No mortal can claim exemption from sin or the 
wounds that sin inflicts upon the conscience. I 
do not assert this now. remember, upon the au- 
thority of Revelation, \ assert it on the universal 
confession of the race. 1 assert it as a fact of 
human consciousness, universally acknowledged. 

Otherwise, what is the import of all the reli- 
gions of nun? What mean the idolatries and 
superstitions, the pilgrimages and penances, the 
smoking altars, tic costly oblations, and the self- 
inflicted tortures of the millions who worship 



INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 



either falsi' Gods or the true? Do they Dot all 
speak the same language; and make the same 
confession of want? Do they not all point to a 
felt desire in the soul, and reach forth after some 
real or imaginary good as a response to that de- 
sire? It is true that the real wants of the soul 
are misapprehended more often than otherwise 1 ; 
it is true that the tiling asked tor is not the thing 
that the soul needs; it is true that the spiritual 
remedies that man has devised are a failure. It 
is true that man has exhausted his ingenuity, 
and has sought out many inventions. lie has 
built his altars of sacrifice; he has slain his thou- 
sands of rams and ten thousands of he goats: he 
has sprinkled himself with the hlood of hulls; 
has poured out rivers of oil, and given his first 
horn for the sin of his soul. He has built costly 
temples, has piled his hecatombs of bleeding vic- 
tims, has erected the burning funeral pile, has 
cast his offspring to the crocodile, and himsel^ 
before the crushing wheels of juggernaut, all in 
the vain expectation of realizing the good for 
which his soul clamored. Is not this so? And 
is there any doubt of the realitv of the want that 



150 INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 

prompts the religious devotion of the world 9 Do 
you say it is all the fruit of blind superstition, 
that men have imagined an unreal want? 1 admit 
the superstition of their devotions, but the want 
in the soul that prompts those superstitions can 
not be denied. It is as real as hunger or thirst, 
or any bodily want. In justification of this, I ap- 
peal to every man's individual consciousness. 
Every man, if honest, will confess that his heart 
condemns him, '' and if our heart condemn us, 
God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all 
things:' 

Let us turn now to the volume of Revelation. 
What is the testimony of the Bible from Genesis 
to Revelation, touching the question of man's 
sinfulness and spiritual need? "As the heart 
panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my 
soul after Thee, (iod. The whole head is sick, 
the whole heart is faint, from the sole of the foot 
even unto the head; there is no soundness in it, 
but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. 
For I know that in me that is in my flesh dwell- 
eth no good thing, for the good that I would I do 
not, but the evil which I would not that do I. 



INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 161 

But I see another law in my members warring 
against the law of my mind, bringing me into 
captivity to the law of sin which is in my mem- 
bers. wretched man that I am who shall de- 
liver me from the body of this death." This lan- 
guage of confession of sin and deep felt want in 
the soul is the vernacular language of the Bible. 
It is the burden of all its teaching, the inspira- 
tion of all its poetry, the very foundation and 
frame work of all its philosophy. 

Be it conceded, then, that man wants a Re- 
deemer. He wants a cure for the sin of his soul. 
He wants the love, the sympathy, and forgiveness 
of the great law-giver whose will he has violated, 
whose mercy he has abused, and whose bountiful 
gifts he has squandered. Having fed on the 
husks and vanities and forbidden objects of time 
and sense, his hungry soul clamors for a better 
portion, for more congenial food. Faith looks up 
and says: " I know that my Redeemer liveth." 
Looking into the world of nature, it sees the same 
Divine handiwork in all its wise contrivance. 
The same hand that created the eye also created 
the light, for which the eye was made. The same 



15- IXTERXAL EVIDENCES. 

hand that created the lungs, created also the air 
with its nice adjustments of the component 
gasses for the use of the lungs. The same hand 
that created the ear appointed also the delicate 
vibrations of the atmosphere by which alone 
music is possible. The same hand that created 
man, seeing that it was not good for man to be 
alone, created also the counterpart and con-da- 
tive of himself. " In the image of God created, 
He, Him. male and female, created He, them." 
The same hand that ordained life for the whole 
animal creation susceptible of hunger and thirst, 
created also the green grass beside the still waters 
to satisfy the wants of every living thing. 

And may not the hungering, longing, thirst- 
ing soul evermore clamoring for spiritual food, 
and for the waters of eternal life, look up to the 
same beneficent all bountiful hand that feeds the 
ravens when they cry, that clothes the lillies of 
the field, that causeth the grass to grow for cattle 
and herb, for the service of man, providing for 
every living thing its food in due season, may 
not the soul look up in faith, and say: " I know 
that my Redeemer liveth?" I know it from what 



INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 153 

I see of the work of His hand. I see the volume 
of nature written all over with His beneficent 

goodness. " He visitest the earth, and waterest 
it. He greatly enriches it with the river of God 
which is full of water, He prepareth them corn 
when He has so provided for it, He erowneth the 
year with his goodness, all his paths drop fat- 
ness — they drop upon the pastures of the wilder- 
ness — and the little hills rejoice upon every side. 
The pastures are clothed with flocks, the valleys 
also are covered over with corn; they shout for 
joy, they also sing." And hath He not prepared 
also a. corresponding good for the soul? "My 
soul longeth, yea even fainteth for the courts of 
the Lord; my heart and my flesh crieth out for 
-the living God. I know that my soul shall be 
satisfied with marrow and fatness, and my mouth 
shall praise Thee with joyful lips. What wait I 
for but Thy blessing and the joys of thy salva- 
tion?" The soul thus conscious of its true need, 
and thus confident that God has provided the 
adequate supply, exclaims in the triumph of 
faith, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." 

Then turning to the New Testament history, 



151 INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 

and looking far back over the ages, his ear 
catches the sound of a living voice, saying, " If 
any man thirst let him come unto me and drink." 
He that drinketh at earthly fountains, the best 
and purest of them shall thirst again. "But 
whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give 
him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall 
give him shall be in him a well of water spring- 
ing up into everlasting life. He, every one that 
thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath 
no money, come ye buy and eat; yea come buy 
wine and milk without money and without price. 
I am the bread of life, the bread of God is he 
that cometh down from Heaven and giveth life 
unto the world. I am the bread which cometh 
d«,wn from Heaven. He that eateth of this bread 
shall live forever. Come unto me all ye that la- 
bor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 
Take my yoke upon you and learn of me. for I 
am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find 
rest to your souls, for my yoke is easy and my 
burden is light. And the spirit and the bride 
sav, come and let him that heareth say, come 
and let him that is athirst come, and whosoever 



INTERNAL EVIDENCES, 155 

will let him take of the water of life freely." 
Then again the soul exclaims, " I have heard of 
Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye 
eeeth Thee." I see in Thee all that my soul 
needs; I see in Thee the true correlative of my 
spiritual being, an answering good for all the 
wants of my soul. I want no Nicodemus now to 
testify to me that thou art a teacher come from 
God. I want no profane historian to corroberate 
the testimony of the friends and disciples of 
Jesus; I ask no demonstration of miracles to eon- 
firm my faith in Him. I know that He is my 
Redeemer, and although He were crucified, dead 
and buried, " I know that my Redeemer liveth," 
without the historical testimony to his resurrec- 
tion. He is a full supply of all my spiritual 
wants. He is the satisfying portion of my soul; 
I know He is divine. 

Such is the reasoning of the soul when it comes 
into a full and conscious recognition of its rela- 
tion to Christ. Faith takes hold of him as the 
faith of a hungry man takes hold of bread. Such 
a man asks neither analysis of the component 
elements of bread, nor the testimonv of others 



156 INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 

that bread is good; that it is the gift of God. be- 
cause it answers every want of his hungering, 
famishing body; he knows it is good. And he 
knows, too, that He that made the body and or- 
dained the function of appetite, appointed also 
bread as the answering correlative of that func- 
tion. When the soul looks on the dying race of 
men, generation after generation, going down into 
the grave of darkness and oblivion, how natural 
to exclaim. " man that is born of woman is of few 
days and full of trouble," and to ask the question 
in all earnestness, "if a man die shall he live 
again?" But when Jesus answers, " I am the 
resurrection and the life, whosoever believeth in 
Me,- though he were dead, yet shall he live; let 
not your heart be troubled, ye believe in God, 
believe also in Me, in My Father's house are 
many mansions; if it were not so, I would have 
told you; I go to prepare a place for you; he that 
believeth on Me shall never die;" when Jesus 
thus speaks in the ear of the anxious soul, it is 
enough. The soul is satisfied and ready to ex- 
claim, " 1 know that my Redeemer liveth," with- 
out either the evidence of miracles or the evi- 



INTKKXAL EVIDENCES. 



dence of history. But in addition to this clear 
convincing soul, satisfying internal proof of the 

divinity of Jesus, He gives to the world the visi- 
ble ocular demonstration of His divine power, by 
healing the sick, by cleansing the lepers, by un- 
stopping deaf ears, by opening blind eyes, by 
raising the dead to life and easting out devils. 
He takes the powers of nature under His control, 
saying to the tempest, "peace be still," walking 
upon the surface of the deep and doing ten thou- 
sand other wonderful works, and all this He does 
to strengthen our weak faith, and help the sold 
to lay hold onhimand accept him as the answer- 
ing good for which it evermore yearns. 

Come, then, oh sinful man, come, oh fearful 
despairing, hungering soul, come to this Al- 
mighty Savior. Come to the fountain of living 
waters that your souls may never thirst. Come 
and partake of this living bread that came down 
from Heaven that your souls may be forever sa- 
tiated with immortal good. Believe on Him who 
hath said, "He that believeth on Me, though he 
were dead, yet shall he live." Make Him your 
choice, accept of Him as the one thing needful to 



158 



INTERNAL EVIDENCES. 



your soul. Abide in Him, as the branch abidetn 

in the vine, that your soul may be filled with all 
the fullness of God. 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. l. r )<) 



The Second Coming of Christ, 



When the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all 
the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit on the 
throne of His glory. And before Him shall lie gathered 
all nations; and He shall separate them one from an- 
other, as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats. 
And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the 
goats on the left.— Matthew XXV: 31, 32, 33. 

Those who literalize the text of scripture and 
materialize the imagery of its symbolic language, 
find in the words of our Savior above quoted 
reference to the end of the world, when He is to 
descend -in bodily person, to judge the quick and 
the dead of all times, and wind up the affairs of 



160 THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 

this terrestrial world forever. Millenarians, of 
whom there has been a large number in the 
church from the apostolic to the present period, 
giving to the vision of John in the twentieth of 
Revelation, a literal interpretation, have con- 
ceived of a thousand years of rest and triumph 
to the church previous to the final judgment; 
when saints and martyrs, the living and the 
dead of every age. are to rise and to reign with 
ChriBt a thousand years, "but the rest of the 
dead live not until the thousand years were 
ended." 

This is called the first resurrection. Then, ac- 
cording to the vision, Satan is let loose for a lit- 
tle season to go nut and deceive the nations, and 
gather them together to battle, and fire came 
down from God out of Heaven and devoured 
them, and the Devil that deceived them was cast 
into the lake of fire and brimstone, to be tor- 
mented day and night, forever and ever. 

Then the dead, small and great, are seen to 
stand before God, He being seated upon a great 
white throne, to be judged out of the things writ- 
ten in the open books according to their works. 



THE SECOND COlftlNG OF CllltlST. 161 

Then death and hell were cast into the lake of 
fire. This is the second death. And whosoever 
was not found written in the book of life was cast 
into the lake of fire. 

Giving literal import to this mosl highly 
Brought of all poetic imagery, it is quite easy to 
make out a plausible theory of a millennium, be- 
Igved in by a large portion of the Christian 
world, the conception of which obtains its climax 
by literalizing what follows in the twenty-first of 
Revelation. "And 1 saw a new Heaven and a 
new earth, for the first Heaven and the first earth 
were passed away, and 1, John, saw the Holy 
city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out 
of Heaven, etc." During the early centuries of 
Christianity many took this language as a literal 
description of a new material Jerusalem actually 
let down from God out of Heaven to be inhabited 
by the Saints forever and ever. And the great 
majority of every period of the Christian era 
have referred the words of my text to these pro- 
'phetic visions and others in the Old Testament 
prophets, equally figurative of great spiritual 
I ideas for interpretation, which is always adjusted 



1(52 THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 

in accordance with the same materialistic modes 
of thought. 

Conceive, I pray you. for a moment my hear- 
ers, all the precious things spoken of in this won- 
derful vision of the Apocalypse, but the hiero- 
glyphics of spiritual language, employed sym- 
bolically to convey spiritual ideas to the soul, 
and to have exclusive reference to the soul, that 
seat of empire in which Christ is King, and 
wherein is erected a throne, the great white 
throne from which lie dispenses judgment and 
justice. Conceive of the Holy city, the New Jer- 
usalem, coming down from God out of Heaven 
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband as 
the new life in the soul, swept and garnished for 
the grace of salvation wherein is pitched the tab- 
ernacle of God in which Himself dwells to he 
their God, etc. How transcendently glorious 
does the vision make this New Jerusalem in the 
kingdom of God that cometh not with observa- 
tion, and that is within the soul. How it ex- 
hausts all the most beautiful and precious things 
of earth in the description of its form, its materi- 
al, its gates of pearl, of sapphire, of jasper, and all 



TIIK SECOND I'OMINC 



haanner of precious gems, with streets of pure 

gold, the Lord God Almighty with the Lamb be- 
ing the temple of it, and with the light of God 
and the Lamb to be the light thereof, expelling 

all night, and making it eternally a lit temple of 
the I inly Ghost. Conceive also of the lake that 
burneth with fire and brimstone, winch in the 
vision, is called the second death, as tin' hiero- 
glyphic description of the unutterable spiritual 
torture of the soul of the fearful, the unbelieving, 
the murderers, whoremongers and adulterers, and 
sorcerers, and idolators, and all Hers. And while 
we are at this spiritual standpoint, let us try to 
get at the true meaning of our subject. - 

Many Christian commentators, almost with 
one consent, refer the text to the end of the 
world, to a general judgment day and to the com- 
ing of the Son of Man in bodily form to pro- 
nounce the final doom of all mankind. 

We can make no intelligent progress nor ar- 
rive at any satisfactory results without first de- 
termining what our Lord means when He speaks 
of coming in His glory. 

It will be conceded that He had not then come 



164 THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 

in His essential glory, but in His humiliation. He 
had appeared in the flesh, He had made Himself 
of no reputation, and had taken the form of a 
servant. He had consented to become a man, 
and to be subject to all the liabilities of our hu- 
man lot, as one of the conditions essential to His 
mission of mercy. He was now in the world of 
sense, to be seen by the eye of sense, to be heard 
by the ear of sense, to eat and drink, to sleep and 
wake, to labor and teach, to suffer and die, under 
all tiie limitations of human experience. This 
human arena, while it was adorned by the Sa-j 
vior with all the dignity of Divine purity and 
made illustrious by the glory of spiritual eon- 
quest, by the glory of suffering, and sacrifice for] 
the redemption of a revolted world, was not the 
arena of His essential glory. 

" When the Son of Man shall come in His 
glory;" He has not yet come in His glory. A 
halo of glory is about Him now which every eve 
can see. His every word and act bespeak His 
unearthly origin. But He is yet in His humilia- 
tion, and the text is a plain prediction, that He 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. L65 

is to come in His glory, as the Judge of the 
world. 

What then is the throne of Christ's glory, and 
how are we to understand the prediction about 
His being seated upon the throne of His glory? 
The sentiments of Christians are not uniform, 
they have never been uniform on this subject. 
There is a great variety of conception among the 
most Orthodox and Evangelical Christiana in re- 
spect to the general judgment and Christ's sec- 
ond coming, as well as in respect to the resur- 
rection, and the state of departed spirits between 
death and the resurrection. All these differenl 
notions take theirfrom in accordance with the 
principles of interpretation by means of which 
the Bible is understood. We have all been cul- 
tured in a school more or less materialistic. The 
sermons and books that we have heard and read 
all our days fixes a day in the near or remote 
future, when Christ is to come in the midst of a 
great retinue of visible angels in bodily form to 
judge the world. Then at the call of a trumpet 
all the dead of all times are to be resurrected in 
the identical body of their life, then the soul and 



166 THE BECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 

b >dy are to be reunited. fhen the Son of Man 
is to be seated on a material throne visible to all 
eyes. Then before Him are to be gathered in a 
great ampitheater, the countless million of the 
living and the resurrected dead, out of every land 
and every age. whom the Judge will separate as 
the sh phelrd divideth the sheep from the goats. 
.-■Miii,; the sheep on his right hand and the goats 
on the left, to receive sentence. Thru the wicked 
.shall go away int.) everlasting punishment, body 
and soul to suffer the reward of their deeds, and 
the righteous reinstated in all their personal 
identity and social relationships as when living 
on earth, shall enter into life eternal in a mate- 
rial Heaven fitted up ami prepared for the eter- 
inl and blessed abode of beings thus constituted. 
We have 1 n taught to look at this whole sub- 
ject from a mat -rial standpoint. To materialize 
man, to materialize the Son of God, and in 6ar 
conception h ive stopped short of the glory, hon- 
or, immortality, eternal life, realized by exis- 
- in the form of disembodied spfrits. We 
have materialized Heaven and Hell: yea the word 
of God itself, by accepting and feeding upon the 



THE SECOND COMING OF C1IKTST. Ui7 

verbal signs the exterior husks of the truth, 
while ignoring the spiritual reality of which they 
are but the vehicle. 

The second coming of Christ is plainly enough 
foretold in the Scriptures. It is no doubt a mat- 
ter of prophecy; Jesus Himself foretold it, the 
Apostles alluded to it often as a matter about 
which there was no room to doubt. But mark 
this, it is always spoken of in the New Testa- 
ment as an event not in the remote but in the 
near future. Jesus predicting .this event, says 
(Matthew XVI: 27 and 28): "For the Son of 
Man shall come in the glory of His Father with 
His angels, and then shall He reward every man 
according to his works. 

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, there be some 
standing here which shall not taste of death till 
they see the Son of Man coming in his king- 
dom." 

So also (Matthew XXIV: 34), speaking the 
same prediction, he says, " this generation shall 
not pass till all these things be fulfilled." 

In Mark XIII: 30, after relating in detail all 
the circumstances of the same event saj^s, " this 



168 THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 

generation shall not pass till all things be done." 
And this is again reiterated in the parallel his- 
tory given by Luke XXI: 32, " and then shall 
they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with 
power and great glory. Verily I say unto you, 
this generation shall not pass away till all be 
fulfilled." Also in that memorable reply of 
Jesus to the high priest, in Mark XIV: 62, " and 
ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right 
hand of power and coming in the clouds of 
Heaven." 

There is but one opinion among commentators 
about the events predicted in the foregoing quo- 
tations. All agree that they refer to the destruc- 
tion of the Jewish temple, and the City of Jer- 
usalem, and the final termination of the Mosaic 
dispensation. And instead of finding in these 
and other .Scriptures relating to the same subject, 
the prediction of Christ's spiritual advent and the 
inauguration of His spiritual reign in that king- 
dom, which is righteousness, and peace, and joy 
in the Holy Ghost, and which is within the soul 
of human faith, commentators have by strange 
distortion, made all these predictions typical of 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 169 

the end of the world, and the beginning of a visi- 
ble kingdom to be ushered in by the advent of 

the Son of Man as the reigning prince in the 
sphere of sense. 

It is believed that Paul wrote the epistle to the 
Thessalonians about the year 52, when he says 
to them, '* now we beseech you brethren by the 
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our 
gathering together unto Him, that ye be not soon 
shaken in mind, or be troubled, either by spirit, 
nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the 
day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive 
| you by any means; for that day shall not come 
except there come a falling away first, and that 
man of sin be revealed, the Son of perdition," 
which is characterized further along as "the 
mystery of iniquity already at work." This man 
of sin is com m only referred to as the Papal pow- 
er. But later and more critical inquiry finds no 
justification of that opinion, for " the mystery of 
iniquity " was then already at work, which is 
now supposed to refer not to the Pope centuries 
in the future, but to the cruel Emperor Nero, 
who, according to Josephus, was a terror to all 



170 THE SECOND COMING OP CHRIST. 

the Provinces, and was then in power, and it is 
mo3t likely to him that Paul refers, when he 
speaks of "the lawless one, the mystery of in- 
iquity, the hinderer." After Nero's death, in the 
year 68,. intestine commotions convulsed the Ro- 
man Empire. As Christ had predicted, "ye 
shall hear of wars and rumors of wars; be not 
troubled, for all these things must come to pass, 
hat the en 1 is n »t vet." The en 1 of wh it? X >t 
the world, but the end of tie* L ■vitical di-p ensa- 
tion. " For many shall come in my name and 
shall deceive many." To this prediction John 
refers in his First Epistle. II: 18: "Little chil- 
dren, it is the last time, as ye have heard that 
anti-Christ shall come; even now are many anti- 
christs, whereby we know it is the last time." trot 
of the world, but of types and ritual-, of the dis- 
pensation of legal rites and cer< monials, to give 
place to the spiritual reign of Christ. Tie 
lation of Jerusalem was according t > the words of 
Christ, to he immediately preceded by general 
c i n motions in the Roman Empire. " For na- 
tion shall rise against nation, and kingdom 
againsl kingdom, md there shall befamin 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 1 i 1 

pestilence-, and earthquakes in diver.se places. All 
khese arc the beginning of sorrows." Nero was 
the first Emperor that enacted penal Laws against 

the Christians. Under his cruel hand Peter and 
Paul suffered martyrdom, and John was ban- 
ished to Patmos. Ilis savage heart lefi its im- 
pression on the whole empire, and none could 
look forward with hope until " he should he taken 
out of the way." After his death the Jewish war 
began, which in three years and a half ended in 
the destruction of Jerusalem and the termination 
of the Jewish hierarchy. To this it is that the 
Apostle, whose words and predictions were leav- 
ened by the predictions of Christ Himself,- re- 
ferred when they spoke of the last days, or of the 
end of the world. With them the event spoken 
of is in the near future; it is impossible that they 
should have reference to the final end of the 
world, as we have always been taught to under- 
stand them.* 

Says Peter, 1900 years ago, "the end of all things 
is at hand." And Paul also, in his epistle to the 
Thessalonians, makes many allusions to the near- 

*i:.;mi on the second Advent, 



172 THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 

ness of the coming of Christ, a thing to be antici- 
pated in the near future, " even the coming of the 
Lord Jesus Christ to be supreme in all hearts." 

From the Scriptures quoted, and from the con- 
clusions adduced, I feel safe in assuming that the 
text can have no reference to the end of this ma- 
terial world, or the return of Christ in bodily 
presence to be seen by the eyes of men. But that 
it refers to His spiritual reign, subsequent to the 
winding up of the Levitical dispensation which 
ended in the overthrow of Jerusalem. 

But we have all been taught to fix the judg- 
ment at a point in the future beyond all the cyc- 
les of time, when the dead, with the living, small 
and great, shall stand before God. I desire, if 
possible, to take a more rational, a more Scrip- 
tural, and a more truly spiritual view of this sub- 
ject. 

I do not by any means desire to lower down 
the fearful realities of the judgment day or to 
eliminate from the doctrine of retribution an iota 
of its solemn import. On the contrary, I desire 
to bring the reality more consciously near to 
every soul. T desire to look through all material 



vi [ !■: SECOND COMING OF CHRIST, I 73 

signs and apprehend the tiling signified. I de- 
sire to go beyond the shadow in search ofth< 
substance. I desire to shut the eye, to close th< 
ear, and for the moment, paralyze all bodily 

sense, that I may take account of the relatione 
and destiny of my immaterial self; and to this 
end I repeat the inquiry, "when does the Son of 
Man come in His glory?" and what is it that 
constitutes the throne of 1 1 is glory'.'' 

The ancient Jews prefigured Him as a prince, 
crowned with the diadem and hearing the seep* 
terofa human king. The throne of His glory 
predicted to their imagination was the seat of na- 
tional power, and the triumphs of His reign, free- 
dom from the thraldom of a foreign yoke, and a 
restoration of the Jewish hierarchy, and of all the 
rights and privileges of the Jewish religion. Lit- 
tle less earthly and material are the conceptions 
of those Christians who predict the second com 
ing of the Son of Man in the visible glory of the 
judgment day, seated upon a great white throne, 
like the lofty peak of some snow white mountain 
in bodily form, " which every eye can see," speak- 
ing in audible words to the countless millions 



5 74 THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 

who have risen from the universal graveyard of 
death, to meet him in judgment. The highest 
throne of glory to which Jesus ever aspired in His 
first advent to this earth, was a seat in the faith 
of men. To be made known to the world as the 
Divine One, as " God with us," and to make His 
kingdom as a spiritual kingdom, coining not with 
observation, not with outward circumstance of 
royalty and visible power, but coming in the 
heart of believers. Ail the expectations of the 
materialistic Jews were disappointed when their 
predicted king had come as the babe of Bethle- 
hem, to be cradled in a manger, to be reared in 
the caste of peasantry, to dwell in the humblest 
vales of poverty, and to seek the crown of his ce- 
lestial empire wherever there is the most of suf- 
fering, deformity and sin among men. He was 
a physician to the sick, He was cleansing to the 
leprous, He was eyes to the blind, hearing to the 
deaf, and most of all, salvation to the guilty. 
Through these channels of Divine beneficence, He 
made His way to the faith of the world, where 
He fixed the eternal foundations of the throne of 
His glory. He was a stumbling block and a rock 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 175 

of offense to the Jews. They rejected him, and 
as a nation, soon experienced the fulfillment of 
His own prediction, "On whom this stone shall 
fall it shall grind him to powder." The expecta- 
tion of those who look for the second coming of 
our Lord with material demonstrations has been, 
and I verily believe, must forever be disap- 
pointed. 

Second Adventists have been in the Church 
ever since the Apostle wrote; prophecy lias pre- 
dicted the event, and interpreters of every genera- 
tion have fixed the time of His coming (often in 
their own day) when all eyes were directed up 
into Heaven to see Him returning so as He as- 
cended in the sight of His disciples after His res- 
urrection. 

Be not deceived, my hearers, Christ has al- 
ready come in His glory with all His holy an- 
gels, and He is now seated upon the throne of 
His glory, and before Him are now gathered all 
nations, and He is now dividing one from an- 
other as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the 
goats. This is a bold and sweeping assumption. 
Be not hasty, I pray you, to pronounce it heresy. 



I'D THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 

Fear not that I would lay an ax at the root of 
that towering tree against which all our Ortho- 
dox standards of belief upon this subject lean for 
support, by no means. I only desire to dispel 
the shadow of that tree, to pass beyond the tan- 
gible signs of the judgment day, and by pouring 
in the light of truer and more spiritual interpre- 
tations of the word of God, endeavor to find the 
true substance of which the literal text supplies 
but a symbol. 

The world knew not God. Christ came to 
bring the knowledge of God into the face of men; 
•• to this end was I born, and for this cause came 
I into the world," said He, "that I should bear 
witness unto the truth." The Jews, the chosen 
people of God, were of the earth, earthly. The 
promised good to be gained as the reward of obe- 
dience, was earthly good in their conception, and 
the desolations threatened for disobedience were 
earthly desolations. They could understand 
Christ when He predicted the destruction of Jeru- 
salem, but they could not understand that the 
retributions of that temporal event so fearfully 
appalling was but a symbol of the more awful 



THE SECOND COMING OB 1 CHRIST. 1 77 

spiritual retribution that awaited (lie souls of the 
incorrigible, when the Sou of Man should come 
in His »-loi-y to judge the world. Christ came to 
break the sky of brass over their heads, to eman- 
cipate their souls from the fetters of sense, and 
convert the whole material world with its judg- 
ments on the one side, and its blessings on the 
other, into a type of spiritual realities in the 
World to come. 

Immortality was a, conception above the mind 
of the average Jew. Christ came to bring life 
and immortality to light, lie came to be a con- 
necting link between the visible and the invisible 
world. He could not inspire faith in the reali- 
ties of the invisible by verbal reports. He could 
not tell men about the spirit world and make 
them believe it. He could not tell them about 
the resurrection ami make them believe it. He 
must needs accommodate His revelation to sen- 
suous minds. He must needs make Himself an 
object of sensible beholding. The invisible God 
whom no eye hath seen or can see, must needs 
become human, that he might show himself to 
the world through the medium of sens,-. He 



178 THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 

must needs accommodate the doctrine of life af- 
ter death to the clumsy apprehension of a sensu- 
ous world by dying and living again in the sight 
of men. In order to make the world believe in 
the reality of the unseen, He must needs go up 
to it in a body that the world could see. All this 
Christ did, as 1 verily believe, to make sure the 
foundations of His throne in the faith of men. 

He told his disciples that it was expedient that 
he should go away. To have remained in the 
flesh as an object of sight would have defeated 
his mam purpose, since it would have intensified 
rather than abated their sensuous conceptions. 
To have localized Himself here in a human body 
would have been the beginning of a system of 
endless pilgrimages from every part of the hab- 
itable globe, rushing to behold, with their bodily 
eyes the greatest wonder of the world, making 
Him no longer an object of faith (but what He 
most desired to avoid), an object of sight. Christ 
came down into humanity to exalt himself upon 
the throne of human faith. He went back to 
heaven in visible form to carry the faith of men 
with him, and so to become forever the Supreme 



iik sKciixi) c()Mi\(i ok ciiuisr 



Object of faith, If be bad vanished out of their 
|Bight, as he did at Emmaus, so that they could 
not sec him depart and enter into the cloud, lie 
would have lost his hold on human faith- 

He went ui) to the Father as he had foretold in 
fche sight of his disciples, and Ids promise to re-< 
turn was corroborated by celestial witnesses in 
white apparel, saying, " This same Jesus which 
is taken up from among yon into heaven shall so 
come in like manner as ye have seen him go into 
heaven." Second Adventists claim this as un- 
answerable in support of Christ's second ooming 
in the flesh, They claim that the Apostles so 
understood it. Admitting- that they did for the 
sake of the argument, is it certain that they were 
not mistaken? They were wry slow to appre? 
heud the spiritual nature of Christ's kingdom, 
£ How often the good Savior was called to rebuki) 
the grossness of their material conceptions, and 
how difficult he found it to make clear to their 
comprehension in visible realities, It was expe- 
dient that Christ should go away, and there must 
be eye witnesses to his departure to make sure 
his hold on the faith of the world, His promised 



ISO THE SECOND COMING 0) 

return was divinely certified; celestial witnesses 
were present to reaffirm his promise, Do any 
distrust it? More than eighteen hundred years 
have roiled away. The Son of Man has never 
returned in the flesh; has he nol returned in his 
glory? Is he not seated on the throne of his 
glory? Is not the universal world of mankind 
before him, and is he not separating then, one 
from another as a shepherd divideth his sheep 
from the goats? 

Three thousand souls ever} hour of time, three 
5CO re and ten thousand every day leave this 
...,,,, 1 ! and go to the judgment where th 
tried by the law of faith. * He thai heiieveii; 
hath life, and he that helieveth not hath net life 
hut the wrath of God abideth on h in." fie n 
shall he sit upon the throne of his glory; the 
throne that he attaint' 1 by his incarnation, death. 
resurrection, ascension, and by his spiritual man- 
ifestation, and before him shall be gathered all 
nations. Don't think of this. 1 pray yo 
far off dateless future event, but as an i ver pres« 
ent constant fact, and know that the human faini 
ilv, hour by hour, in an army three thousand. 



THJ': SECOND COMINe OV CHRIST, Ifil 

Btrong is summoned lor trial. Think not, I pray 
you, of the resurrection as a remote event to ac* 
crue at the end of the world. The Scriptures 
teach no such thing. The ablest and soundesl 
of Biblical scholars now repudiate the theory as 
inconsistent, not only with reason, but with the 
plainest and most approved understanding of 
God's word. Rather believe that death and the 
resurrection are simultaneous events, and thai 
when freed from the shackles of the flesh, we are 
instantly translated into the spirit realm to re- 
ceive the reward of our deeds. 

The judgment day, which is said to be the day 
for which all other days were made, brings pale- 
ness to every countenance. Let us pause and 
think how very near Ave all are to it. My friends, 
the end of the world is just at hand with every 
one of us. Within the short space of thirty years, 
which is the average of human life, a thousand 
million souls pass the ordeal of the judgment. 
When death comes, that is the end of the world 
with every soul, and the beginning of eternal 
good or evil. 

A few words on this point will relieve your pa- 



182 THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 

tience. Let us revert to first principles. All 
agree that the Son is co-existent with the Father, 
and that before his incarnation as the son of 
Mary, he was a spirit as God the Father was a 
spirit. All agree that his crucified body was 
raised to life, that he lived, ate, drank, slept, 
walked and conversed, and was recognized by his 
friends, who saw and felt of his wounds, and 
knew that he was the veritable Jesus that was 
crucified. All agree also that his body was under 
his miraculous control. When occasion required, 
he could put it out of sight. At Emmaus he van- 
ished out of sight. On another occasion he ap- 
peared in the midst of his disciples in a closed 
room without the opening of a door or the utter- 
ance of a sound. All agree that he ascended in 
bodily appearance, and that a cloud received him 
out of sight. Beyond that we know nothing of 
his body. No reference is ever made to it after- 
wards. When he appeared to Saul on the way to 
Damascus nothing is said of bodily form. We 
are assured that flesh and blood do not dwell in 
Heaven. Christ's risen body was a fleshly body 
—it went into a cloud as other bodies go into the 



THE SECOND COMING OP CHRIST. 183 

grave. We know nothing farther. Christ was a 
spirit. He assumed human form for a purpose. 
It was the instrument used as other men's bod- 
ies are used in this world for all the purposes of 
sentient existence. Other men lay their bodies 
in the grave when they have no more use for 
them. Christ's incarnation was not completed 
until he had fulfilled his purpose to go to the Fa- 
ther. The world must be convinced by the evi- 
dence of their senses, in order to retain his hold 
on human faith. He went up into the heavens 
and a cloud received him out of sight. All else 
is conjecture. Was he excarnated in the cloud, 
that is, did he shuffle off the mortal coil beyond 
human sight and reduce it to vapor? Did it 
vanish as at Emmaus? And did he then as- 
sume the spirit form of his anti-incarnate state? 
All these questions are left to conjecture without 
evidence. That he ever lives, seated at the right 
hand of the Father as our advocate and interces- 
sor, we have assurance. Here let our faith abide, 
knowing that in whatever form of lift; he is infi- 
nitely glorious, not because of his external shape, 
but because of his internal goodness; because of 



184 



THE SECOND COMING OP CHRIST. 



the unseen beauty of his holiness, and knowing, 
too, that through faith we shall be like him, and 
shall see him as he is. 

I am aware, my friends, that the theories I 
have advanced are open to criticism. I have not 
been careful to follow the grooves worn smooth 
by the current of thought in which the popular 
Christian mind has been accustomed to run. I 
have been able in the short limits of an ordinary 
sermon, to do but little more than barely enunci- 
ate the several points of my theory without stop- 
ping to argue them, and for the purpose of leav- 
ing them distinct in your mind, I will recapitu- 
late the points as follows: 

First, I hold that the soul is immaterial, and 
that its happiness and its misery are internal to 
itself, the result of no material surroundings, but 
exclusively the result of its own moral condition. 
The soul is in Heaven when in a state of equilib- 
rium and peace; it is in Hell when in a state of 
unrest, and out of harmony with itself and God. 

Second, I hold that the language of Scripture 
that relates to the future state under material 
representations is figurative language, employed 



THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 185 

to typify spiritual conditions, and that all inter- 
pretations that literalize such language, tend to 
mislead the mind and obscure the truth. 

Third, I hold that the throne of Christ's glory 
is figurative of his spiritual supremacy through 
the power of faith, and that the design of his in- 
carnation, was to gain such supremacy over the 
human heart. 

Fourth, I hold that the second coming of 
Christ, always spoken of by himself and the 
Apostles as a near event, refers to his return to 
them in the spirit; that it was fulfilled on the 
day of Pentecost immediately after his ascension. 
I believe with Joseph Cook, the great divine and 
lecturer of our denomination, and with many 
other Evangelical teachers of our time, that the 
Holy Spirit which descended on the disciples on 
the day of Pentecost, is the continued life of 
Christ in his Church, and that it is in this form, 
and not in bodily form, that he fulfills the prom- 
ise, " Lo, I am with you always, even unto the 
end of the world." 

Fifth, I hold that the end of the world and the 
day of judgment for each individual soul is the 



18(3 THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 

day of the death of the body; that the judgment 

is a perpetual fact, and that many thousands, 
small any great, appear before God every day. 

Sixth, I hold that the resurrection is typical of 
the life of the soul, that the figure of a spiritual 
bolv teaches not the resurrection of the material 
body, but the immortality of the soul of which 
Christ is declared to he tin' resurrection and the 
life that it is an event simultaneous with the 
death of the body. It is spoken of in tin- pres- 
ent tense, and as the body -> returns to dust tbe 
spirit returns to God who gave it." 

Seventh, I hold that the end of the world 
Spoken of by our Lord had reference to some 
event in the near future, probably to the winding 
up of the Levitical dispensation; and that of the 
end of the natural universe we have no scriptural 
prediction. 

If in anything I do not sec eye to eye with my 
Christian friends, in heart I trust we are agreed, 
and let us pray that no differences of intellectual 
perception, alienate that love which is the 
cementing bond of the Church, and which should 
cause all brethren to dwell together in unity. 



Til I' [DEAL MAN, (.87 



The Ideal Man. 



And God said, let us make man in our Image, aftei 
our likeness: and Let them have dominion over the fish 
of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cat* 
tie, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing 
that creepeth upon the earth. 

So God created man in his owx image, in the image of 
God created he him; male and female created he them. 
Jen. I: 26, 27, 

When all other orders of life hud been created, 
each after its kind. Each species after a certain 
ideal preconceived in the Creator's mind, then 
God said, " Let us make man in our image, and 
after our likeness," This is not said of any other 



188 THE IDEAL MAN. 

creature of life. Nothing else was made in the 
likeness of God. But everything created, whether 
by Divine or human art. is fashioned after some 
ideal likeness. The artist oannot produce a thing 
on canvass or in concrete form, without an ideal 
model previously conceived, The watch must be 
a thought in the maker's mind before it can he. 
come a thing of sight. And the Divine Creator 
works under the same law. If the pedigree of an 
individual horse be traced back in time from son 
to sire, and from sire tograndsire, until it readies 
its source, it will reach an ideal in the Creator's 
mind, after which the first horse was made to be* 
the progenitor of a species, the successive indi- 
viduals of which should manifest in space the 
form and functions of the original ideal. All 
other creatures of life having been made each af- 
ter its kind, then " God said let us make man in 
our image." 

It is not in order here to introduce the mooted 
questions pertaining to the Godhead— whether 
that be a unit in tripple form, or a triplet — each 
factor of which is distinct in personality, and all 
three of which are indispensible to the unity of 



THE IDEAL MAN. [S'.t 

the Godhead — waving these questions, we can- 
not, without violence to the record, hoth of the 
Old and New Testament, ignore at least the du- 
ality, to say nothing now of the Trinity of the 
Godhead. St. John is very explicit in specifying 
and naming the party of the second part in this 
duality. He calls him The Word, or objective 
expression of the invisible God. "He was in the 
beginning with God, he was God. All things 
were made by him. He was made flesh and 
dwelt among us." Jesus says of himself, " be- 
fore Abraham was I am," implying that he was 
coevil with the Father and was present when God 
said, "let us make man in our image and after 
our likeness." The common thought of the 
Church is that Jesus began to be human when he 
became the son of Mary. That before the incar- 
nation he was divine and not human. The 
thought I wish now to evolve, is that he was al- 
ways human. That he was the Godman antece- 
dent to the incarnation, antecedent to the crea- 
tion. 

" He applies to himself the unique but signifi- 
cant title, 'The Son of Man,' which is a Hebrew 



190 THE IDEAL MAN. 

idiom, a form of expression used in the Old Tes- 
tament to express ' Humanity.' It is equivalent 
to and means the same as man in the general 
sense, or ' The Humanity.' Instead of using the 
word 'man' in the generic sense, and saying, I 
am 'Tin: Humanity,' while you are only men 
partaking of humanity, he calls himself the ' Son 
of Man.' The term means humanity, not in its 
individual members, but in its root. He means 
to say to us, I am the principle of your humani- 
ty, or your humanity in its principle. " I am 
the vine, ye are the hranches." (Philosophy of 
Trinitarian doctrine: Pease p. 102.) 

Looking backward for the root element of the 
canine or any of the animal species, we find it to 
be an ideal in the Creator's mind, without which 
original conception, such a thing as the canine, 
or any other species is inconceivable. Without 
the antecedent thought the thing were impossi- 
ble. But there is no indication of a Divine ele- 
ment in any of the animal species. No one of 
them ever rose to the plane of moral character, 
where right and wrong are known, where alone 
sin and holiness are possible, where reason and 



THK IDEAL MAN. 191 

speech, the instrument of reason, are in requisi- 
tion, where conscience, the behest of God is spir- 
itually asserted, and where moral responsibility 
the result of a self-determining will is conceiva- 
ble. These Divine elements are above and out of 
possible reach of the beasts. They have knowl- 
edge in the sphere of nature, but they have no 
relation to the higher realm of spirit and the su- 
pernatural. In life they act under the laws of 
material nature, and when they die, nothing sur- 
vives them to respond to the laws of the super- 
natural. The life of the beast, like the life of a 
tree, or the light of a candle being snuffed out is 
for ever extinct. 

In tracing back the genealogy of the human 
species as St. Luke has done, it winds up thus: 
" Which was the son of Enos, which was the son 
of Adam, which was the son of God?" In com- 
mon with other sentient creatures, Adam was 
formed out of the dust of the ground, and up to 
this point he was not human any more than the 
dog or the horse were human. He was like other 
sentient creatures, of no one of whom is it said, 
'' which was the son of God?" Something more 



1^2 THE IDEAL MAN. 

was needed to realize the proposition then under 
advisement between God the Father and the son 
of man, viz: to make man in the Divine image. 
Hence, having formed man out of the dust of the 
ground he breathed into his nostrils, and he be- 
came a living soul— became the son of God, like 
unto " the son of man "—the original ideal of the 
human race, after which all the successive indi- 
viduals of the species are each a separate mani- 
festation, and without which, as the author above 
quoted says, " Such a thing as the human species 
is inconceivable and manifestly impossible." 

We have seen abnormal specimens of sentient 
life in human form from which the divine in- 
breathing of the higher nature, for some inscruta- 
ble reason was withheld; a semblance of a man 
without a soul, an idiot, dragging out the life of a 
beast on the lowest and most revolting level of 
sentient being. And from such examples, we 
learn that humanity, which constitutes our like- 
nessto the Divine image, is distinct from our 
fleshly form, is derived from its Divine original, 
and is part of it, as truly as the branch is part of 
the vine. 



THE IDEAL MAN. 193 

Our forms of though have always been molded 
more or less in error on this profound and deeply 
interesting subject. We have I n slow, to be- 
lieve that humanity, apart from "the son of 
man,'' is an impossible conception; that he en- 
tered the race no less at the creation than at the 
incarnation not to make himself human, but to 
make mankind human. At the creation lie was 
inbreathed as the crowning act by which man 
became a living soul. At the incarnation he was 
born into the race to repair the damage which 
sin had inflicted upon that divine thing called 
•humanity, which God breathes into the nostrils 
of every son and daughter born in the line of our 
first parents. 

" The son of man," then, revealed in the full- 
ness of time in the person of Jesus of Nazareth is 
the ideal maim. He is the party of the second 
part in the duality of the Godhead in whose im- 
age the Creator, after deliberate council, decided 
to make man. The root principle of all humani- 
ty is in him. And being derived from him it 
must partake of his own divine nature. 

The catechism tells us that " our first parents 



194 THE IDEAL MAX. 

were created in righteousness and true holiness." 
The Bible does not tell us any such thing. It 
tells us that Adam was formed out of the dust of 
the ground in common with other animals, and 
that God distinguished him from all the others 
by breathing into his nostrils, thus causing him 
to become a living soul — to become HUMAN — to 
become a spirit in the likeness of God. (See the 
following discourse on the Garden of Eden.) 

The premise that I wish to establish is, that 
humanity is no part of the animal, whether in 
the bruit or in man. It belongs to the spiritual 
side of our being, and was divinely inbreathed 
when man became a living soul in the likeness of 
God. 

And another point I wish to make is, that our 
humanity that likens us to God does not neces- 
sarily imply holiness. It is a thing distinct from 
moral character. It implies a living soul 
equipped with powers capable of holiness and 
capable of sin. The Divine inbreathing imparts 
neither the one or the other. It imparts moral 
power, but not moral character, which comes af- 
terwards by the voluntary use of the spiritual 



rtowere, The idea that Gud created man's char< 
a.eter as an artist creates the different shades of 
color upon canvas implies involuntary virtues op 
vices which involves a moral absurdity. These 
conn 1 afterwards as the fruit of voluntary action. 
Conceiving Adam to be a generio term typical of 
the human race, then God breathes into the nos- 
trils of every child of the race, and he becomes a 
Jiving soul, neither sinful or holy, without the 
knowledge of good or evil, and in accordance with 
the Adamic type, the whole family of man is 
placed on trial, each upon his own individual re- 
sponsibility. In the lower animals, the carnal 
instincts which are their only governing law, and 
which are wisely ordained for good ends are self- 
regulating. They arc under the autonomy of na- 
ture which limits them to their natural and nec- 
essary uses. Hence they can do no sin, "To 
err is human." in us are the same carnal in. 
stincts as are in the beast, ordained for the same 
ends, viz: procreation and subsistance of life, 
Put we are human, like unto our divine original, 
¥ The Son of Man," who gave us dominion over 
the instincts of our animal nature, "the lust of 



JA)D THE IDEAL MAN. 

the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life 
which are not of Ihe Father, but of the world." 
And this will accord with the language of the 
allegory if we paraphrase " the beasts of the field, 
the fish of the sea, and the fowls of the air," over 
which God gave man dominion, and make them 
symbolic of animal instinct. Besides, by this use 
of the terms, the rationale of the whole subject 
becomes intelligible, Nature sets bounds to the 
works of the flesh in the lower animals. Thus 
far, and no farther, can they go, and within the 
natural limits, they seek natural and legitimate 
ends. In man it is not so, Humanity involvea 
the fearful responsibility of rational control in 
the empire of the senses, which in us, defy the 
antonomy of nature and run riot to the ruin of 
the soul, except reason assert her sway and say 
to the rebellious passions, " peace be still." 

Within the breast of every son and daughter 
of the race there abides the same option typified 
by the experience of Adam in presence of the tree 
of the knowledge of good and evil, and in pres» 
ence of the tree of life, pleasant to the sight, and. 
whose fruit is good for food, 






THE IDEAL MAN. 197 

On the one side is the carnal nature, under no 
self-restraining law as in the lower animals, but 
in us manifested by the works of the flesh, which 
in the language of the Apostle, are these: " Adul- 
tery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 
idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulation, 
wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, mur- 
ders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like." On 
the other side are " the fruits of the spirit," be- 
tween which and the works of the flesh, there is 
an impassable gulf. '* These are love, joy, peace, 
long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meek- 
ness, temperance, against which there is no law." 
Adhering to the thought that Adam means the 
human race, each individual of which is clothed 
with the fearful responsibility of voluntary choice 
between these opposite elements of character, we 
escape the hard lesson of the schools about origi- 
nal sin, inherent in the blood and transmitted by 
generation, and learn the other more rational les- 
son which teaches that every soul is subjected to 
the same temptation, and is liable to the same 
fall, on the same conditions, for which himself, 



1 ( .»8 THE IDEAL MAX. 

not the first man is responsible. (See the follow- 
ing discourse on the fall.) 

In the fulness of time, The Ideal Humanity 
" that was in the beginning with God and that 
was God, was made flesh and dwelt among us." 
The story of the temptation to which he was sub- 
jected is the story of the Garden of Eden re- 
peated under different symbols with a different 
result. The second Adam, while he was the Lord 
from Heaven, was at the same time human, and 
"■ subject to like passions as other men." The 
high mountain to which the tempter led him, was 
the same mountain to which he leads all men. It 
was the mount of ambition which is in the breast 
of every man. The first Adam was ambitious to 
become as God's knowing good and evil, the price 
of which was, to stultify reason and go captive to 
the flesh under the enticements of the Devil. 
How (fitter and how remorseful was the knowl- 
edge so gained, every transgi*essor finds out by 
experience. "The wages of sin is death." When 
11 the son of man " entered the dark wilderness of 
temptation, the forbidden fruit was transformed 
into all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory 



THE IDEAL MAN. 100 

of them. This was the most commanding- of all 
possible appeals by which to carry captive the 
sensuous nature. 

We are in the habit of thinking thai he, be- 
cause divine, could repel the tempter with a "gel 
thee behind me," while we, because human, could 
not, forgetting that humanity and divinity are 
synonymous terms. Freewill, reason, conscience, 
moral judgment, everything that constitutes our 
humanity, and which God imparted to us when 
he made us living souls in his own image, arc 
not one thing in the " son of man " and another 
thing in us. They are divine elements in Our 
humanity as truly as in that of the Ideal Hu- 
manity. And it will not do to assume that bis 
was not a sensuous nature, tempted in all points 
like as we are. We rob the temptation of its 
highest significance, and of all its moral value to 
us, if we say he was not subject to like passions 
as other men, and was exempt from the dangers 
of other men, by reason of the supernatural 
qualities of his character. He took upon himself 
our nature with all the liabilities of our human 
lot. It was not the omnipotent might of a God- 



200 THE IDEAL MAN. 

by which he overcame the Devil, but the moral 
might of a man. And it is only in this light that 
the temptation of the Savior can be of value to 
us either as our example or our encouragement. 
Up to the time of his baptism there is little in 
his history to indicate the great future that lay 
before him, or to show that himself was conscious 
of it. But when the spirit lighted like a dove 
upon him, and a voice from Heaven proclaimed, 
" this is my beloved son," then, if never before, 
he awaked to the full consciousness of his fearful 
responsibility as an ambassador from the eternal 
throne to the empire of earth in revolt from its 
allegiance to the king of kings. How natural 
under the crushing weight of this sudden and aw- 
ful announcement that he should follow the lead 
of the spirit into the wilderness and betake him- 
self to fasting and reflection. Then came the 
mightiest of all moral conflicts between the em- 
pire of Satan and of sense on the one side, and 
the empire of God and the spirit on the other. 
The one reinforced by the irrepressible clamors 
of hunger, begotten of forty days' fasting, under- 
takes to prostitute the commission of the " son of 



THE IDEAL MAN. 201 

man " sent to bring the bread of (lod thatcometh 
down from Heaven to one fallen, and sin-ruined 
humanity. "If thou be the .son of God, com- 
mand that these stones be made bread." 

The soliloquy that followed can be imagined 
from the brief hints of the story. 

If I should convert these stones into the bread 
that perisheth I should be deified by the sensu- 
ous world and make sure my way to riches and 
renown. I should become an ally to the very 
power that I am born to antagonize. " Man can- 
not live by bread alone." The beast that lives 
only in the flesh can live by bread alone. But I 
am come that they might have spiritual life, and 
this is attainable only by mortifying the clamors 
of sense and yielding unreservedly to the domin- 
ion of the spirit. "To be carnally minded, is 
death. To be spiritually minded, is life and 
peace." 

Shall I do evil that good may come? I am 
sent as the captain of salvation to lead the re- 
deemed of the Lord to victory over the lusts of 
the flesh by the way of self-denials, the way of 
sufferings, and crosses. And shall the leader in 



202 THE IDEAL MAX. 

this holy war, abashei by the wolf of hunger 
himself, go captive by inglorious surrender? 

[f the absurdity of the suggestion entitled it to 
his pity an 1 his scorn, h >w much more the sup- 
position of miraculous interruption of nature's 
laws to avert the consequences of fool-hardy ex- 
posure of his life by precipitating himself from a 
pinacle of the teinple which towered above the 
grandure of the city, and commanded the sight 
of all beholders, where divine interposition, seen 
not only by the masses, would bring him into 
notoriety among the hierarchsof the church, and 
give him rec mition as a messenger come frtuw 
God. The ami it ion of the first Adam to eat of 
tie forbidden fruit an 1 be as Clod's knowing 
good and evil, was by him always subordinate to 
the la v of duty, which in this case, was chmpn*j 
hend-d in 'Thou shalt not tempt the 

Lord thy God. I receive not honor from men," 
And when offered all th > kingdoms of the world 
and the glory of them as the price of digression, 
and as a bribe for the abatement of his integrity; 
and for surrender to " the lust of the flesh, the 
lust of the eye, and the pride of this sensuous 



THE IDKAI. .MAN. BQjS 

life," his holy indignation rose t3 its climax ami 
repelled the assault with an emphatic f ' get ttree 
behind me Satan." 

"Then the Devil left him and angels. came and 
ministered unto him." 

- The temptation of our Lord was not peculiar 
any more than that of Adam was peculiar, The 
experience of both is the experience of universal 
humanity. If the first Adam and all his posteri* 
ty had maintained their integrity by resisting all 
the encroachments of their lower nature, and by 
Subjecting their carnal instinots unreservedly to 
the dominion of those lofty powers which liken 
us to God, and which constitute our proper hu- 
manity, then the conflict so signally and so dis- 
gracefully lost, would never have been repeated 
in the experience of the second Adam, But be? 
cause all had partaken of the forbidden fruit, and 
had learned by sad experience, the distinction 
between good and evil, how terrible the forfeiture 
of the one, and how gauling the servitude of the 
other; then in the fulness of time, the second 
-Adam, who is the Lord from Heaven, took upon 
himself our nature a,n 1 accepted the liabilities of 



204 THE IDEAL MAX. 

our humanity. When the struggle was over; 
when the powers of the flesh personified as the 
Devil, were vanquished and fled; when the fruits 
of the spirit, personified as the angels, came and 
ministered unto him, then he said to his faithful 
followers, ''In the world ye shall have tribula- 
tion, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the 
world." To overcome the world — the lust of the 
flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life — is 
the business of divinity, whether in the God-man 
or in us; whether in the copy or its image; 
whether in the vine or its branches. Holiness 
means business. It means something to do. It 
mearvl antagonism against evil, an aggressive 
warfare against the world, the flesh and the Devil. 
It is impatient of inertness. It sees no merit, 
and no truth in the song, "There is nothing 
great or small that's left for me to do." 

The manhood of the ideal man consisted in 
overcoming the world. The moral might in 
which he asserted the behest, '' get thee behind 
me Satan," belongs to humanity, the dignity and 
glory of which consists in the same uncompro- 
mising integrity in the presence of temptation, ir- 



THE IDEAL MAN. 205 

respective of all consequences. It may entail 
poverty more humiliating than that of " the foxes 
that have holes, and the birds that have nests." 
It may entail persecution and invite the hostility 
of kings and the hate of majorities, who clamor 
" away with him crucify him." But neither the 
lion's den, the fiery furnace, nor the cruelties of 
the cross, can abate the courage or paralyze the 
tongue of the moral hero who spurns all the 
kingdoms of the world and the glory of them 
when offered as a bribe, and in the might of Di- 
vine authority says, "get thee behind me Satan." 
Strength to do this is the " sine qua non " of 
true manhood. King David in his dying charge 
to Solomon — his royal heir — said, " I go the way 
of all the earth, be thou strong, therefore, and 
show thyself a man by keeping the command- 
ments as they are written in the law of Moses." 
The thought uppermost in his mind was, that 
moral character was the first condition of royal 
greatness. He placed manhood before royalty, 
the want of which entails failure alike upon the 
kings and subjects. " Better is he that ruleth 
his own spirit' than he that taketh a city." The 



206 THE IDEAL MAX. 

power to do this is inherent in humanity. As 
before said, the soul created in the divine image 
is equipped with moral power — a free responsible 
will — but moral character is the outcome of re- 
sponsible action. Be thou strong, therefore, and 
show thy manliness by keeping the divine com- 
mandments. Royal prestige that comes of cun- 
ning in diplomacy, of prowess in war, and of ex- 
pedient statesmanship, is possible without this 
condition, but true manliness, which is the syno- 
nyme of Godlikeness, and which is the first con- 
dition of true greatness, comes of the voluntary 
exercise of the powers inherent in the living soul 
created in the image of God. 

In the fulness of time the law became life, be- 
ing incarnated in the person of the ideal man, 
■' in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead 
bodily. Be thou strong, therefore, and show thy- 
self a man," by keeping the charge of the Lord 
thy God, now a living, walking, speaking Deca- 
logue, the high behest of which is " follow me." 
I, not the cold letter of the law, the canons of the 
church, or the commandments of men, I myself, 
am the way, the truth and the life. I, l ' the son 



THE IDEAL MAN. Mi 

of man," am the divine original in the likeness of 
which ye are created. I " was in the beginning 
with God," when in the council of creation God 
said, " let us make man in our image." I am 
manifested in the flesh to overcome the world. 
Strength to overcome the world, the flesh and the 
Devil as I have overcome it, is " the one thing 
needful " to reduce this sin-cursed world to an 
Eden of unalloyed blessedness. But Adam, 
meaning all mankind, failed to " he strong and 
show themselves men '•' — failed to assert their 
God-given power over temptation, and say as I 
have done, " get thee behind me Satan." Hence 
weakness — moral " death hath passed upon all 
men," not because one man sinned, but because 
" all have sinned." All have partaken of the for- 
bidden fruit in face of the warning written in the 
soul by the finger of God. '' In the day thou 
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." The death 
that follows transgression is the death of a sui- 
cide. .'' But be of good cheer," said Jesus, " I 
have overcome the world. I am the vine of 
which all ye are branches. I am the resurrec- 
tion and the life." I can restore life to the spirit- 



208 THE IDEAL MAN. 

ual suicide, and "there is no other name under 
Heaven given among men " that can do it. "I 
am the bread of God that giveth life unto the 
world." I am the vine. The elements of life in 
the vine are the same as those in the branches; 
the same in the parent as in the child, but the 
strength of the one is superior to that of the 
other. The tender branch is swayed by every 
wind that blows, but the stock is immovable, 
having strength to resist and overcome all temp- 
tation. " He that abideth in me, and I in him, 
the same bringeth forth much fruit, for without 
me, ye can do nothing." 

" Tbe branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except 
it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye 
abide in me. If a man abide not in me he is 
cast forth as a branch, and is withered." Cre- 
ated in the divine image he is yet capable of bis 
own free will, while he cannot destroy that 
image, to abuse, befoul, and drag it down to. Hell. 
Dives was in the divine image, otherwise he 
could not have been human. His moral suicide 
did not convert him into a beast. If that were 
possible, it were possible to quench all the fires 



THE IDEAL MAN. 209 

of Hell. The heat of those fires means the recoil 
of the divine elements, conscience, free will rea- 
son, which made him human. 

The relationship of the ideal man to our com- 
mon humanity thus unfolded, how it exalts him! 
how it dignifies us! He is the divine original of 
all humanity, the divine stock of which all we 
[are branches, from which alone the branches de- 
prive streng'th to overcome the world; the bread of 
God that giveth life unto every spiritual suicide; 
the resurrection and the life of the withered 
branches overcome of the world, the Mesh of the 
Devil; the good shepherd whocareth more for the 
wandering sheep lost and starving in the moun- 
tains of evil, than for the ninety and nine that 
went not astray and who giveth his life for the 
sheep. 

Why am I immortal and not like the beast 
that perisheth? because I am a branch of an im- 
mortal vine. Why could not God send Dives 
into annihilation instead of sending him to Hell? 
Because God cannot do impossibilities. Dives 
was of the " genus homo," which is a spirit in the 
likeness of God. The spirit abides the man for- 



210 THE IDEAL MAX. 

ever if not in the sunshine and glory of Heaven, 
in the outer darkness of Hell. If the branch 
abide not in the vine it is withered, but not con- 
sumed. It is still that divine thing that thinks, 
that knows, that remembers, that reasons and 
suffers. God cannot convert the branch into a 
beast and annihilate it. Though withered, it is 
still part of an immortal vine. I can never get 
away from myself, no more from God of whom 
myself am an image. 

" If I ascend up into Heaven thou art there. If 
I make my bed in Hell, behold thou art there. 
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell iq 
the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall 
thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold 
me. If I say surely the darkness shall cover me, 
even the night shall be light about me. Whither 
shall I go from thy spirit or whither shall I flee 
from thy presence?" Dives in Hell is still a 
branch of an immortal vine. The great gulf be- 
tween him and the vine, is fixed by himself. If 
he willed to abide in the vine, then even to him, 
lost and ruined. " the son of man" were the res- 
urrection and the life. 



THE IDEAL MAN, 211 

" For while the lamp holds out to burn, 
The vilest sinner may return," 

God's mercy includes all men in all times and 
in all worlds, and Hell is possible*only because 
some of their own free will refuse to abide in the 
vine and feed on him who is the resurrection and 
the life. 



212 THE GARDEN OF EDEN, 



The Garden of Eden. 



[The following is one of a series of Sundav 
night lectures delivered in Eureka, California, on 
Old Testament history, beginning with the crea- 
tion and occupying those evenings for a period of 
four months. 

In this discourse Adam is taken as a generic 
term, not as the name of an individual person, 
but "an appellative noun for the human species: 
its application to the first man as his proper 
name was subsequent and secondary." (Harris 1 
Man Primeval, pgs. 24, 25.) This idea, which 
many Christian scholars now accept, gives new 



THE GARDEN OF EDEN. I'l'I 

interpretation to the whole story of the garden of 
Eden.] 

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden ; 
and there he put the man whom he had formed. — Gen. 
II: 8. 

Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the gar- 
den of Eden to till the ground from whence he was 
taken.— Gen. Ill: 23. 

In speaking of the creation of the world, of the 
creation and of the constitution of man, as the 
story is told by Moses, it has been my endeavor 
to keep distinctly in mind the main idea and 
purpose of the writer, viz: this, to reveal the true 
cause of things, to reveal the supernatural and 
the divine agency in all the ongoing processes of 
nature. It is the province of science to discover 
the material links in the chain of causes and ef- 
fects in what we term nature. Moses had noth- 
ing to do with these. These were outside of the 
great lesson of theologic truth that lies behind 
them all, but which in no way conflicts with any 
of them. Science discovers that gravity causes 
the apple to fall, and the moon and planets to re- 
volve. Theology does not contradict this, but 
goes back of gravity to discover and reveal an 



214 THE GARDEN OF EDEX. 

intelligent will that controls and energizes gravi- 
ty, whose servant it is, to perfect his designs in 
the machinery of nature. When Moses tells us 
that the Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath 
of life, and man became a living soul, he does not 
undertake to describe the mode of his creation, 
whether by growth or development, but only the 
source of his two-fold being. God formed his 
body, the material is of the earth earthy. God 
breathed into his body so formed, and he became 
a living soul. The intermediate links in the 
chain of cause ami effect, Moses entirely ignores; 
they belong to science, and science is not what lie 
is teaching, but theology, which, when rightly 
interpeted, never conflicts with nature's laws 
which always express God's power and will. And 
this is what Moses is revealing to the Jews. 

The same idea prevails in the allegory of Gar- 
den of Eden. For it is an allegory, a highly- 
wrought poetic picture employed, as all sacred 
poetry is, to represent by means of pictures of the 
imagination the ways of God with men. If we 
attempt to localize the Garden of Eden, to give it 



91 *> 

THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 



geographic metes and bounds, and to literalize its 
poetic imagery, Ave become like children who, en- 
amored of specific parts of a picture, cut them 
out, appropriate them, and so spoil the picture, 
Every picture, whether on canvas or in poetic 
figure of speech, taken in its entirety, expresses 
living truth more real, more telling on human 
conviction, more in keeping with the laws of 
verity, than either the facts of history or the 
framework of philosophy. Hence it is that the 
ways of God with men are so generally revealed 
under the poetic figures of allegory. The holy 
Prophets who delivered the messages under a 
sanction of » thus saith the Lord," finding the 
plain letter of prosaic oration too tame and im- 
potent to utter forth what the mouth of the Lord 
hath spoken, soared aloft into the realm of im- 
agination and drawing upon her most vivid and 
soul-inspiring pictures, made them the instru- 
ments of a hieroglyphic language which alone 
, was equal to the divine task of expressing to men 
the great thoughts of God. How else could Job, 
David, Solomon, or John the Revelator, all the 
prophets, or even our Savior himself have con- 



216 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 

versed with the world of the things of the King- 
dom of Heaven. Literal fact is too tame, words 
are too barren of vitality to be the medium of 
spirit communication. Hence spirit, when it 
converses with mortals, always resorts to the por- 
traits of imagination as the word-pictures of its 
ideals. This justifies a saying, that untaught 
minds are prone to deny, viz: this, that fiction is 
more pregnant with truth than fact, and inter- 
pruts the words of the Evangelist, when he says 
of Jesus: " Many other things spake he to them 
with parables, and without a parable spake he 
not unto them." 

These remarks are designed to prepare our 
minds to inquire for the real truth underlying 
the allegory of the garden of Eden. The story is 
a picture, and everybody with half an eye for the 
beautiful and the true must see that the Master 
hand that drew the picture was guided by a mind 
that is more than human; that the brush which 
swept the parchment on which that picture is 
drawn was of more delicate fibre than any found 
in the studios of human art, and that it left be- 
hind it creations too exquisite for the clumsy 



THE GARDEN OK EDEN. lil i 

manipulations of a human hand, too lofty for the 
earth — horn conceptions of a human ideal. 

The thought in the mind of the artist is inno- 
cence and peace, an ideal abode which no stain 
of wrong had ever denied a life unclouded with 
fear, uncorroded with care, and unruffled by aught 
of moral discord to disturb its peace or mar its 
happiness. The symbol of this ideal abode is the 
fittest of all conceivable symbols. Any earthly 
home in its completeness must be in the midst of 
a blooming garden, wherein is all manner of fruit 
trees, permeated by streams of living water, whose 
lawns are clothed with perennial green, and 
whose gravelly walks are bordered by ever bloom- 
ing flowers. The inspired artist places Adam in 
an ideal garden planted by the hand of the Lord 
God himself, in which is made to grow every tree 
that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; 
the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, 
and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 
If this symbolic language be literalized, it will 
fail utterly to bring to our minds its deep and 
beautiful meaning. It is' the language of symbol, 
and the truth it contains is beyond the power of 



gig 'THE; GARDEN OF EDEN. 

mere words to express. It is a portraiture of in- 
nocence, and brings to our imagination a rational 
being in whose soul the conflict of good and evil 
is unknown, a being whose moral status is beet 
typified by that of a child unborn, concerning 
which you can predicate neither right or wrong. 
The child. 1 efore it opens its eyes to the light be 
clouded by the mists of wrong, or its lungs to the 
air poisoned by the miasms of sin, is innocent, 
but not virtuous; is harmless, but not holy. For 
virtue is impossible without the reaction of vice; 

holiness is impossible without knowing its i- 

tvast^-sin. The child in embryo is perfect as an 
embryo. Its embryo organs and ideas are nor- 
mally perfect, but the embryo body cannot be 
developed into manhood without reaction of forces 
external to itself. The limbs cannot gain strength 
to walk without the reaction of the floor on which 
it walks. The embryo hand cannot gain strength 
to work without the reaction of bat and ball, of 
hoop and wheelbarrow to bring the muscles into 
requisition. The embryo mind cannot gain 
strength to think without the reaction of things, 
and the relation of things that furnish materials 



THE GARDEN QV EDEN. 219 

• for the laws of thought. The embryo soul cannot 
•be righteous without the reaction of wrong. It 
[must know good and evil, and by the act of free 
[will, choose the good and reject the evil, or else 
it cannot be virtuous. The innocence of the em- 
, bryo child and the virtues of the righteous man 
arc very different moral conditions. The one is 
innocent because he is made so by a power over 
which his will has no control; the other is right- 
Bous by reason of reaction and conquest on the 
side of virtue. 

Adam's soul was in embryo. It knew no more 
of right or wrong than the child unborn; being 
the first and only human being, and having yet 
had no contact with any evil power, having 
known no contrast between wrong and right, hav- 
ing felt none of the reaction of the one, he knew 
neither the strength nor the value of the other. 
And as there is no way to develop an embryo 
child into manhood but by the reaction of forces 
external to itself, so there was no way to develop 
the manhood of Adam but by the reaction of a 
power that would bring into requisition the force 
of a responsible will to resist the encroachments 



•220 



THE GARDEX OF EDEX. 



of wrong. In his embryo innocence, therefore, 
fresh from the hand of his Divine Creator, we see 
him in the picture before us, in the midst of a 
garden planted by the hand of the Lord God 
himself, perfect in beauty, rich in verdure, smil- 
ing in bloom and luxuriant in fruit. In which 
paradise of peace, of plenty, of sparkling water 
and shining emerald, is also growing the tree of 
the knowledge of good and evil. And this brings 
me face to face with the question of the ages, 
which has always made the ways of God with 
man so utterly past finding out. Why did the 
Lord God plant in that home of innocence which 
he had prepared as the abode.of the man he had. 
made, the tree of knowledge of good and evil? 
Why didn't he plant in its place another sort of 
a tree, the fruit of which was not forbidden? Or, 
dropping the figure of the allegory, why did he 
permit sin to enter this world as an element in 
human nature, and as a modifying power in hu- 
man history? I may as well take the bull by the 
horns and come to the answer directly, without 
circumlocution. Because he could not perfect 
his ideal without the reaetion of moral evil. 



THE GARDEN IK' EDK.V. 



Adam was perfectly innocent without the knowl- 
edge of good and evil, but he was no more a per- 
fect man without that knowledge than the unborn 
child. As I have already said, he must be de- 
veloped in virtue, if at all, by the knowledge and 
reactions of wrong, even at the fearful liability of 
going wrong himself. God could make the man 
innocent by his arbitrary act, as he makes every 
unborn child innocent; that is one thing. He 
could not make him holy by his arbitrary act, for 
that is quite another thing. That implies com- 
pulsion of the will, while holiness is inconceiva- 
ble without absolute freedom of the will. Holi- 
ness implies the knowledge of good and evil, and 
comes only of reaction against sin. There is no 
pertinence in the question why sin is in the world 
any more than there is why the negative pole of 
the battery is in the world? The answer to the 
latter question is easy, for without the negative 
the utility of the positive is nullified. Electric 
results come of reaction of the two poles. Every- 
thing in nature has its antithesis. If there be a 
positive, there must be a negative. You cannot 
conceive of the one without the other. The idea 



THE GARDEN OF EDEX. 



of upward implies the idea of downward. The 
idea of light implies the knowledge of darkness. 
You cannot think of day without at the same 
time thinking of its opposite night. You cannot 
conceive of the rainbow without conceiving of the 
cloud behind it. Bo cold and heat, winter and 
summer, peace and war, right and wrong, holi- 
ness and sin, beauty and ugliness, Heaven and 
Hell, God and the Devil, are antithetic realities, 
each of which is essential to the conception of the 
other. If it be asked why Hell is permitted to 
be, the answer is, that Heaven is impossible with- 
out it, since Heaven consists in reaction against 
Hell, and conquest over it. If it be asked why 
the Devil is, the answer is, that he is a necessary 
factor in the conception of God himself, since 
God's highest glory and loftiest power is shown 
in contrast with, and in reaction against, the 
power of the Devil. God and evil are antithetic 
terms. You cannot conceive of the one without 
the other. Good in its simplest sense means re- 
lease from, or victory over evil. It means release 
from want, release from disease, release from sin. 
It means conquest over evil. How, then, can 



THE GARDEN' OF EDEX. 



you conceive of good, without at the same time 
conceiving of evil? God is the supreme, the ideal 
good, the highest conceivable antithesis of the 
direst conceivable evil, which is personified vari- 
ously, sometimes as the Devil, sometimes as Sa- 
tan, sometimes as the serpent, sometimes as a 
roaring lion, sometimes as the spirit that worketh 
in the children of disobedience. Under whatever 
name called, it is the negative pole in the moral 
battery of which God is the positive, and, as in 
galvanism, the positive can work out no results 
without the negative, so in the realm of spirit, 
results come of two reacting forces, neither of 
which is conceivable without the other. 

Adam, in the picture before us, is seen in em- 
bryo. He is innocent, hut undeveloped either in 
right or wrong, for he has no knowledge of either. 
This knowledge is brought out in the picture un- 
der the figure of a tree whose fruit is fair to look 
upon and pleasant to the taste, but the use of 
which is positively forbidden, under pain of moral 
death. 

Here we have the world in miniature; that is 
the design of the picture. Adam, while he is the 



224 THE GARDEN OP EDEN. 

progenitor of the race, is at the same time the 
representative type of every individual of the 
race. The experience of Adam is the experience 
of every son and daughter of his posterity. Be- 
holding him in the allegory, we behold the hu- 
man family. Beholding the garden of Eden as 
here portrayed, we behold the world in minia- 
ture. Beholding the trees of the garden that are 
pleasant to the sight and good for food, we behold 
the endless variety of productions, and of means 
provided by the Author of our being for the ra- 
tional joy, and for the highest possibilities of good 
to the human race, personal, social, physical, in- 
tellectual, moral and spiritual. Beholding the 
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we behold 
under the type of a tempting fruit every possible 
temptation to sin in every one of its countless 
and insinuating forms, the yielding to which 
brings the recoil of evil into the soul. It is this 
recoil that is called the knowledge of good and 
evil. Adam, fresh from the hand of his Divine 
Creator, in the immaculate innocence in which 
he was made, knew nothing of either good or evil. 
And every new-born child, equally immaculate 



THK GARDEN OF KDEN. 226 

and pure, learns the fearful lesson l>y the same 
exposure to temptation, the consenting to which 

brought the curse upon Adam. Adam's fall is 
the type, hut not the cause of my fall. We hear 
much in the theology of the schools of original 
sin and of its descent by natural inheritance to 
all the posterity of out- first parents. One of the 
first lessons of our childhood was, " that in Ad- 
am's fall we sinned all." 

But if we take the allegory of the garden of 
Eden as a portraiture of the world in miniature, 
and take Adam as a representative type of all the 
successive individuals of the race, and if we learn 
from the lesson the obvious truth that we fall as 
he fell, but not BECAUSE he fell, then we shall 
away with the old dogma of the creed and cease 
to cast the responsibility of our transgression 
upon the shoulders of Adam. We eat the forbid- 
den fruit, not because our first parents ate there- 
of; we eat it because we are victims of the same 
temptation and the same weaknesses that over- 
came their integrity in righteousness. They 
yielded to the tempter; then, and not till then, 
did they learn, by the bitter experiences of shame, 



22l> THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 

and remorse, and fear, the knowledge of good and 
evil. Then, and not till then, did earth cease to 
be to them a paradise of beauty, of peace and of 
plenty. Then, and not till then, was the fiat of 
God pronounced. "Cursed be the ground for thy 
sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days 
of thy life. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou 
cat bread, till thou return unto the ground, for 
out of it was thou taken, for dust thou art and 
unto dust shalt thou return. Therefore the Lord 
God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to 
till the ground from whence he was taken." Now 
he has forfeited all right to the tree of life, which 
henceforth is guarded by cherubim and a flaming 
sword, lest the transgressor eat thereof and live. 
So fearful was the forfeit of transgression on the 
part of our first parents. In this they are repre- 
sentatives of, but no exception to, all their pos- 
terity. The experience of one is the experience 
of all transgressors. The fruits of^sin are identi- 
cal, then, and now, and always. The garden of 
Eden is an allegorical picture of the world in 
miniature. Every symbol employed in that pic- 
ture, and in like moral conditions, are matters of 



THE GARDEN Of i:i>kn, 227 

real life the world over in all time. So long as 
the forbidden fruit of sin is untouched, untasted, 

imliaixllcd; so long as the serpent is resisted, 
baffled and overcome by the authority of righte- 
ous indignation, saying, "Get tine behind me, 
Satan;" so long the earth is an Eden of peace, a 
garden full of all manner of trees whose fruit is 
pleasant to the sight and good for food; whose 
prysial waters irrigate all desert lands and cool 
all thirsty tongues; whose paths are strewn with 
Howers and whose lawns are rich with grass that. 
makes glad the cattle on a thousand hills. It is 
transgression — not the transgression of Adam, as 
an individual man, for remember he is the generic 
type of all humanity — 'but the transgression of the 
race that has converted the paradise of earth into 
a region of what is figuratively called in the alle- 
gory, a region of thorns and thistles. It is by 
Jiteralizmg the figurative language of the allego- 
ry that we lose its very significant import, if we. 
take the sign for the thing signified, and rest our 
faith in the material symbols themselves, the 
trees, fruits, flowers water courses crystals, 
thorns and thistles, and lose sight of the spiritual 



228 Tin; GARDEN OF KDK.V. 

realities, which they are employed to indicate, 
then we study the picture to no purpose. But if 
we take the beautiful and precious things of the 
garden as but the material signs of the better 
things that belong to man's spiritual being, 
Which, when realized, are aide to transform the 
ruggedest external surroundings into an abode of 
blessedness and an Eden of joy ; if we take the 
Bterilty of the cursed ground that doom* the 
transgressor to a life of toil, and forever to eat 
bread in the sweat of his face, as a symbol of the 
inevitable unrest and spiritual recoil that is in- 
separable from disobedience; if we take thorns 
and thistles, not in their literal meaning, as the 
noxious plants that incumber the ground and 
choke the fruits thereof, but as the noxious pasi 
sions that usurp the soul, dethrone reason, be- 
cloud and embitter the moral life, then we see 
that the earth is as man makes it to be. Take 
out of this world to-day all propensity on the 
part of man to partake of the forbidden fruit of 
sin, and the most highly wrought imagery of the 
beauty and bliss of the garden of Eden would be 
realized in every part of the habitable eartb, 



THE GARDEN OF EDEN. L'L".t 

Then all the dogs of war would be dumb; thru 
all " swords would be beaten into plowshares, and 
all spears into pruning hooks, and the nations 
would learn war no more." Then all manacles 
that fetter the limbs of the slave would fall 
broken at his feet. Then the pirate on the high 
seas would become a messenger of mercy, and 
the felon incarcerated for crime would be turned 
loose to serve in the cause of human weal. Then 
every brothel in the world would be turned into 
a sanctuary of religious devotions. Then the 
rumseller's trade would be gone, and himself 
would be converted from a vampire preying upon 
the life blood of the weak and depraved, into an 
honest man, willing to earn an honest living by 
honest industry; then the sun would no more 
shine on suffering wretchedness, crime and want, 
" for the earth would be full of the knowledge of 
the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the 
sea." 

The poetic imagery of the garden of Eden is but 
a symbol of the entire world in the absence of 
wrong. Set right the hearts of the children of 
men the world over; give all men the moral might 



230 THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 

of him who resisted the serpent in the wilderness, 
and who with all the kingdoms of the world and 
the glory of them set before him as an induce- 
ment to transgress, repelled the bribe with scorn 
and with a " get thee behind me, Satan;" give 
this moral might to the children of men, and the 
whole world would become instanter a paradise 
of beauty, of glory, and of good, exceeding in real 
life all the poetic painting of the garden of Eden 
as it came from the fruitful imagination of the 
inspired artist. 

And is this glorious consummation never to be 
realized? Sin has brought death into our world 
with all our woe. Is there no redemption? 
Blessed be God, there is balm in Gilead, and 
there is a Physician there. The first Adam is of 
the earth earthy, but the second Adam is the 
Lord from Heaven. " He shall go out with joy, 
and be led forth with peace. The mountains and 
the hills shall break forth before him into sing- 
ing, ar.d all the trees of the field shall clap their 
hands. Instead of Hie thorn, shall come up the 
fir tree, and instead .of the brier, shall come up 



liAUI'UON OK KDKV. 



the myrtle tree, and it shall be to the Lord for a 
name — for an everlasting sign that shall not be 
cast off." 






232 THE LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 



The Law of Conscience. 



I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many 
things contrary to the name of Jesus of Xazareth. — Acts 
XX VI: 9. 

Paul had been accused by one Tertutlers 3 the 
orator before Felix. Felix heard him, and will- 
ing to show the Jews a favor, left him bound at 
Cesarea until Festus came into the Province. 
Then the Jews conspired to influence Festus 
against Paul. Festus listened to Paul, but de- 
cided that he had no jurisdiction of the matters 
of which he was accused by the Jews, and as 
Paul had appealed to Caesar, he decided to send 



THE LAW OP CONSCIENCE. 233 

him to Rome. But Agrippa said unto Festus, I 
would also hear the man myself. To-morrow, 
eaid he, thou shalt hear him. 

So the next day Paul was introduced before 
King Agrippa, and congratulates himself that he 
is permitted to answer before the King, who, 
though a Roman officer, was not a Roman by 
birth, but a Jew, and well versed in all customs 
and questions among the Jews. For that reason, 
says Paul, I beseech thee to hear me patiently. 

The first apology he makes in his plea is, that 
m is a religious man. That he had always been 
a religious man, a conscientious man. He had 
always acted under the pressure of religious con- 
viction. "After the most straitest sect of our re- 
ligion," said he, " I have lived a Pharisee." And 
he does not use the term Pharisee there in the 
bad sense that we are wont to associate with it. 
If so, he Would not have used the term at all be- 
fore Agrippa. By it he means that he instantly 
served God day and night, with an honest con- 
science. For he says: " I verily thought with 
myself, that I ought to do many things contrary 
to the name of Jesus of Nazareth." And now the 



234 THE LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 

question which has caused more debate than any 
other in moral philosophy is this: Did Saul of 
Tarsus do right in doing what he verily thought 
he ought to do? His case is the most salient one 
of all others by which to try this question. And 
in the outset let it be premised that the question 
is not one of abstract right and abstract wrong. 
Abstractly it is wrong to do things contrary to 
the name of Jesus, to destroy my neighbor's life 
or property. And yet, under given circum- 
stances; it is right to do both. 

The act has no moral character apart from the 
motive. Under one set of circumstances it is 
criminal. I ought not to do it; under another 
set of circumstances, it is right. I ought to do 
it. The word ought carries with it all the force 
of law. What a man verily conscientiously, 
honestly thinks he ought to do. he must do irre- 
spective of the question of abstract right. Ab- 
stractly it is wrong to pull down my neighbor's 
house. I am forbidden by law to do it. But if 
by destroying my neighbor's house I can head 
the flames that threaten a whole ward, then I 
verily think I ought to do it, and therefore I do 



Ilh: LAW OF CIINSCIKNCK. 



right. The absolute right is determined by the 
conscious ought, The absolute right is one thing. 
The abstract right is another thing. To-day I 
verily think I ought to go north; to-morrow 1 

verily think I ought to go south. On both days 
T do right, though on the latter I go directly op- 
posite to the way of the former. Both are right. 
because of the OUGHT. When I verily think I 
ought to go north, I cannot go south and do 
right, and " vice versa." 

Yesterday Saul of Tarsus verily thought he 
©UGHT to do many things contrary to the name 
of Jesus of Nazareth; to-day he verily thinks he 
ought to know nothing save Jesus Christ and 
him crucified. Admitting that he was equally 
conscientious yesterday and to-day. he could not 
do otherwise than he did, without violating his 
t'ONseiENCE, which no man can rightly do. 

Conscience is the voice of God in the human 
soul. It is an infallible voice. It does not dis- 
criminate or decide the abstract right and wrong 
of conduct. That is not the office of conscience. 
Conscience is a i niversal law. It is uniformly 
the same law. It is not one thing in the soul of 



236 THE LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 

the Christian and another thing in the soul of 
the heathen. The latter are not condemned be- 
cause they are ignorant of the truth or because 
they do things abhorrent to Christians. What 
they believe or disbelieve, what they have done, 
or have left undone, is not the test of their char- 
acter. God holds them and us responsible alike 
to do what they and we respectively think OUGHT 
to be done. The old notion that the heathen will 
be damned in the future life because they were 
not Christians in this life is quite untenable. The 
test by which they will be tried is the same as 
that by which we and all men will be tried. The 
heathen world are divided into two classes by the 
same distinction as the Christian world. In both, 
the good do what they verily think they ought to 
do; the bad do what they know they ought not to 
do. The thing done in neither case constitutes 
the criterion. But the conscious OUGHT. We 
send the gospel to the heathen, not to save them 
from Hell in the future life, but to save them 
from the Hell of heathendom in this life. God's 
loving kindness embraces the heathen and the 
Christian alike, and all who have a conscience 



THE LAW OF COXSCIKXCK. 287 

void of offense, whether heathen or Christian, are 
accepted of him. 

In a human court there is a judge and a sher- 
iff. It is the office of the Judge to decide .ill 
questions of equity. It is the duty of the Sheriff 
to enforce the decisions of the Judge. The Sher- 
iff is the righteous executor of what the Judge 
perceives to be right. He will hang an icmaewnl 
man just as certainly as a guilty one if the Court 
so ordered. We can educate the Judge and he 
may change his decisions. But the action of the 
Sheriff is unchangeable; he does always what the 
Judge verily thinks he ought to do. In the soul 
the moral perception is the Judge, the con- 
science is the Sheriff. What I perceive to be 
right, conscience impels me to do. The moral 
perception determines what I ought to do, and 
what I verily think I ought to do, that the voice 
divine within me, the Holy Spirit of God says no. 
It may be abstractly wrong; it may be abstractly 
right. Irrespective of that question it is abso- 
lutely right to do what I verily think I ought 
to do. 

But there is a great practical law comes in here 



238 THE LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 

which all are in duty hound to observe. 

The Apostle puts it this way: "And herein do 
I exercise myself, to have always a conscience 
void of offense toward God, and toward men." 
Alive to the solemn fact that every man is bound 
before God to do what he verily thinks he OUG-HT 
to do, he is also bound "to EXERCISE himself to 
have a conscience void of offense toward God and 
toward men." 

'• There is a way which seemeth right unto a 
man; but the end thereof are the ways of death." 
Every man knows that while conscience is the 
infallible law of moral action which no man can 
rightly disobey, at the same time it does not al- 
ways lead men into the way of abstract right. 
Abstractly it was wrong for Paul to do many 
things contrary to the name of Jesus. Abstractly 
it i^ wrong for the Sheriff to hang an innocent 
man. Bat absolutely it is right for the Sheriff 
to do it because he must execute the judgment of 
the Court. It is not the office of the Sheriff to 
determine the abstract question, but to do what 
the J idol determines; that for him is right. 
Everybody knows that Judges are fallible; they 



THE LAW OE CONSCIENCE. -■>■> 

rule differently at different times and under dif- 
ferent circumstances. But the Sheriff' never 
changes his action, he simply enforces the behest 
of the Judge. We can do nothing to educate the 
Sheriff. His action is unerring even though he 
take the life of an innocent man. For him it is 
right. He has no option. He cannot do other- 
wise without condemnation to himself. We can 
educate the Judge. We can give him light and 
knowledge; can bring to his mind the precedents 
of other Courts; the rulings of other Judges, and 
the wisdom of experience found in history and 
thus modify his decisions in accordance with ab- 
stract right. Then we shall have a Sheriff void 
of offense, who will enforce no wrong decree. We 
can educate the moral perceptions of the soul, 
and by so doing can change the ought. Yester- 
day Paul perceived Jesus of Nazareth to he an 
impostor. Conscience impelled him to do many 
things contrary to him. To-day he perceives him 
to be the supreme object of religious faith and 
devotion, and conscience impels him to glory in 
nothing else but in the cross. 

Conscience is the same power alwavs; its office 



240 THE LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 

is to impel him to do what he verily thinks he 
ought to do. The ought was one thing yester- 
day; it is another thing to-day. 

To avoid disastrous consequences then, it is not 
enough that our way seem right unto ourselves. 
The pilot of a ship must know that his way is 
right, otherwise there is no safety to the ship. If 
his guides have misguided him: if his compass 
lias become erratic, seeming right is no protection 
to the ship. A good motive, while it protects the 
pilot from blame, will not protect the ship from 
disaster. The PROPELLING POWER of the ship is 
uniform. It drives her forward or backward as 
the pilot directs. The conscience drives the 
man now north, now south, as he in his judg- 
ment verily thinks he OUGHT to go. The pilot 
exercises himself always to so set his helm that 
the propelling power of the ship shall be void of 
offense. That power has no choice; it is the same 
whether the ship go north or go south. Con- 
science has no choice; it is the same yesterday, 
to-day and forever. It is the same power in Saul 
of Tarsus as in Paul the Apostle, always com- 
manding him to do what he verily thinks he 



T11IC I, AW OF CON60IENGB. IN 1 

bug ht to do. There is then great force in the 
expression, •• herein do I exercise myself." 

The pilot that guides the helm of a ship is ex- 
onerated from responsibility for disaster only 
when he uses all the means within his reach to 
make him know the way in which he ought to 
■B. If he neglect those means, if he ignore the 
signal of the stars, the instructions of his chart, 
and the hearing of his compass, and shipwreck, 
and death result from his ignorance, he is guilty 
of manslaughter, nor can he plead in extenuation 
that the way seemed right unto himself. lie is 
guilty of the crime of ignorance, which is some- 
times the highest crime known to law. 

It is ever)' man's duty to know the rigid, so far 
as God has put it in his power to know the right. 
To know what I ought to do, and what I ought 
not to do. What I verily think I ought to do, 
that my conscience impels me to do, and " vice 
versa." This is a law of consciousness independ- 
ent of the Bible. 

Let us look at it in common life, and seek there 
pa illustration of the principle in hand. Con- 
testants come into courts of law impelled by self- 



-4_' THE LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 

ishness on both sides. Each party comes into 
court with liis counsel and his witnesses, and the 
effort is by concealment, by false coloring, by 
forced construction to bias the judgment of the 
Court and make it seem right to determine the 
OUGHT in my interest. It is not the impartial 
rioiit that either party seeks. But both parties 
seek to make, each his own side of the case, SEEM 
right to the Court. That done, his interest will 
be secured, wrong or right. 

This illustrates the moral conduct of selfish 
men the world over. We bring questions into 
the court of the soul every day for adjudication; 
not to determine what is abstractly right ami ab- 
stractly wrong, but by strained construction of 
scripture and of known facts, to get consent of 
our moral judgment to decide the ought on the 
side of self-interest. My harvest is suffering. 
My hay is exposed to rain. Or my rivals in 
trade are getting advantage by doing business on 
the Sabbath day. My family needs support, 
OUGHT I not to gather rny crop or open my store 
for trade on that day. I have been in my store 
all the week and need recreation. Ought 1 not 



ill ic law OF CONSOIENl r. L'4.'-i 

to preserve my health by going on a pleasure ex- 
cursion instead of going to the house of God? I 
have worked hard in the mill, early and late, six 
days. Ought I not to rest on theseventh? Does 
the Lord require (his at my hand, that I should 
risk my property or my trade 9 Sacrifice needed 
recreation or needed rest in order t<> honor the 
Lord's day and the Lord's House? Cannot 1 
serve him as well at home, by rest, by necessary 
work, or by recreation in the fresh air of field or 
forest as by going with the multitude to the 
house of worship? Thus I reason the case with 
my moral judgment and strive to get consent to 
do what my interest or my preference incline me 
to do irrespective of the ought or the ought not. 
To bias the Court of the soul and gain its consenl 
to what without bias it would decide ought not 
to be, is the natural bent of human nature the 
world over. To make our way SEEM right unto 
o; rsklves when it is abstractly and ABSOLUTELY 
wrong, and thus bribe conscience to impel us in 
a way the end when of is the way of death is the 
policy of the Devil always. 

When our neighbor lies by the wavside half 



244 THE LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 

dead, bleeding, suffering, destitute, we know 
everybody knows, we ought to go to Him , bind 
up his wounds, pour in oil and wine, and take 
care of him. He is a max. That's all the que&l 
fcion we have to ask. A certain man fell among 
thieves. He was HUMAN, hence our neighbor. 
But when a China max, a black man or an In- 
dian falls among thieves, and lies by the wayside 
half dead, how many are the apologies we bring 
into the court of the soul to justify us in passing 
by on the other side. He's a heathen; he's filtby; 
he's a slave; he's selfish; be works for himself and 
his clan. He works cheaply and lives on ten 
cents a day; we can't compete with him. He's 
in our way. Go to, now, let us kill him. and 
the inheritance of labor shall be ours. How liaid 
we belabor our moral judgment to make it seem 
ki<;ht t<> despise, to abuse, to vol) and murder oil! 
neighbor, when he, by means no matter how 
faultless, comes in the way of our self-interest, 
and then especially bow naturally the tbought- 
less, ignorant, incendiary mob get consent of 
their moral judgment to override reason and law 
until the wav they have made to seem right ends. 



THE LAW OF CONSCIENCE, 245. 

in devastation, violence and death. 

We the Anglo-Saxon race made it seem right 
to enslave the African race. How copious our 
arguments in justification of this at the bar of 
reason. We succeeded in making it seem right 
to do it. They bore the mark of Cain. They 
were descendants of Ham. They were under the 
curse of God. They had no rights that white- 
men were bound to respect. Ought they not to 
be made hewers of wood and drawers of water? 
Yes, we said, and refused to let them go free 
But though our way was thus by special plead-" 
ing made to seem right, the end thereof was the 
way of intestine war, rapine, anarchy mourning 
woe and death. Here is a chance to make money. 
Make it easily, make it fast; a chance to put my- 
self in circumstances of comfort and competence 
with means to help up public enterprises, give to 
the poor, and make myself in many ways useful, 
and I belabor my moral judgment. 

Ought I not to go into it? True, there are 
weighty reasons against it. Distilleries and the 
whole drink business are a great evil. But a 
worse man than I will do it if I do not, One 



246 THE LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 

more selfish, less beneficent, less public spirited. 
Ought I not to go into it, take advantage of the 
situation and make myself useful. Thus we get 
tacit consent and make the way of flagrant evil 
6eem right unto us, but the end thereof are the 
ways of death. The sting of remorse and <i:lf- 
cobdemnation is n<> easier for a bad man to bear 
than for a good man. It is the gnawing of the 
worm that never dies and the flash of the flame 
that is never quenched, Hence the refugee of 
Ur- to which bad men resort to make their evil. 
jeem right unto themselves and thus get 
the help of conscience to make a wrong way seem 
right. But the end thereof is nevertheless cer- 
tain death, The only proper question for the 
good man is, M Lord, what wilt THOU have me to 
do?" What odght I to do? Not what is safe, or 
expedient, or profitable, What ought J to do, 
and what ought I not to do? 

God has divided the human family on that 
line. And it is a question as momentous as eter- 
nity on which side of it I stand. Am I belabor- 
ing my judgment with false pretenses, and in 
Obedience to my selfish, covetous desires, striving 



THE LAW OF C< ) N S( ' I KM ' K . 



to make a wrong way seem right; or am I mak- 
ing it my chief and only study, irrespective of the 
popular frown, or the popular smile, irrespective 
of the question of poverty or plenty to KNOW 
what I ought to do? When that question is set- 
tled, then he is the true hero who dares to do it, 
regardless of all consequences. 

What I verily think I OUGHT to do, after hav- 
ing exercised myself to have a conscience void of 
offense, that I must do, though the lion's den. or 
the burning fiery furnace heated seven times hot- 
ter than it was wont to be heated, stare me in the 
face. 

And this brings me to the point in which ray 
argument culminates. It is the business of Chris- 
tianity to find out what the people individually 
and in the aggregate ought to do. The way that 
seemeth right is more often wrong than right, 
and because it seemeth right, it is none the less 
liable to end in evil. To know the right and do 
it is the climax of character, and the only condi- 
tion of true heroism. What I verily think I 
ought to do my conscience impels me to do 
wrong or right. The real idea and intent of 



248 THE LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 

civilization is to set right human judgment as 
to the ought and the ought not. And oh, how 
fearful the crime of which so many are guilty, 
the crime of perverting their own moral judg- 
ment and striving to make the wrong seem 
right. They are like the pilot at the helm of a 
ship who shuts his eyes to the stars and the com- 
pass, until the propeller drives him onto the 
rocks, instead of exercising himself to know 
where he ought to go, and setting his helm in 
the way of safety, then he will have a propeller 
void of offense. 

Said a brother to me the other day, I don't 
think people generally have any conscience. By 
whieh he meant to say, that the question of 
ought and ought not is not generally a govern- 
ing question, but that of self-interest, present 
gratification, pecuniary profit. The question is, 
will it pay to do what I ought not to do? 

Are not the prevalent facts that extort from 
the mouth of good men such a confession regard- 
ing the human conscience, the most appalling 
feature of our human life? It is not true that bad 
men have no conscience; nor is it true, that under 



THE LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 24'.) 

the blazing light of our Christian civilization 
anybody verily thinks he ought to run a gamb- 
ling hell, trample on the Lord's day, rent prop- 
erty to prostitutes, overreach his neighbor by 
false representations in trade, or turn his back 
on the poor who pine in want. They all verily 
think they OUGHT not to do any of these things. 
He who reads the thoughts of the heart knows 
very well that conscience, however abused, de- 
bauched, insulted and repressed in the soul of 
wiaked men is never silent, but is ever crying out 
in that secret chamber, " this is the way, walk ye 
in it." The conscious ought in the soul of bad 
men is precisely the same as in the soul of good 
men. The difference lies in the fact that the one 
does what he verily thinks he ought not to do, 
and the other does what he verily thinks he 
ought to do. If we continue to do what we veri- 
ly think we ought not to do we incur the fearful 
possibility of grieving away the spirit of God 
which remonstrates through the conscience, of 
stifling that divine behest mercifully ordained to 
move us forward and upward in the way in which 
we ought to go, until we, " after our hardness 



250 THE LAW OF CONSCIENCE; 

and impenitent heart treasure up unto ourselves 
wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of 
the righteous judgment of God. 

"Who will render to every man according to 
hie deeds. 

" To them who by patient continuance in well 
doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, 
eternal lite. 

'• But unto them that are contentious, and do 
not obey the truth, hut obey unrighteousness, in- 
dignation and wrath. 

"Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of 
man that doeth evil." 

There is such a thing as a PURE heart and a 
mscien ;e. There is such a thing as a de* 
filed conscience through the suicidal madness of 
human depravity which hardens the soul to do 
what it verily knows it ought not to do until 
conscience is dehauched, repressed, abused, 
crushed, and the soul is given over to inevitable 
destruction. 

But be assured, oh sinful man, that depravity 
at most can but smother the voice divine for a 
brief moment, it i. hut a question of time, (.'on- 



nil-: I, AW Of DONSOIENOB, 2B| 

£oience eannot be stilled long. It will rise and" 
jeassert i t s thunders in the soul, and as memory 
will reproduce hour by hour in a world without 
end all the refuges of lies by which we have 
Bought to silenoe its voice in this world, it will 
pour in the burning vitriol of its remorse upon 
the heat and torment of the soul forever and ever, 
Jt is the voice oj a loving (rod in this world to 
impel ns in the way in which we verily THINK we 
OUGHT to go, and make sure our way to the celes- 
tial paradise. It is the voice of an angry (n-d ii, 
the world to come to meet out to incorrigible. 
souls the awful retribution duo to those who 
trampled it under their feet here by doing what 
they verily know they ought not to do, 

The Apostle "verily thought he ought to do 
many things contrary to the name of .] , 
Nazareth," How quickly, how radically he 
tinned right about face in ail the spirit and pur- 
poses of his life when he came to know that he 
OUGHT to rlo so no more. It was conscience that 
moved him before his conversion, and it was con* 
i?cience that moved him after his conversion. No 

man is condemned for doing what he vsrilv 



j?82 THE LAW OP CONSCIENCE, 

thinks he ought to do. after " exercising himself 
to have a conscience void of offense." But men 
are condemned who (under Christian light, and 
the same under heathen twilight), persist in do* 
ing what they know they ought not to do and 
leaving undone what they know they ought to do, 

That is what beclouds our civilization. Our 
prisons are filled by people who do what they 
know they eeght not to do, who crush beneath 
the feet of their wickedness that holy monitor 
within the soul appointed of God to impel them 
in the way of purity, peace and blessedness. We 
have houses of prostitution, gambling hells, drink 
phopg, profanity, dishonesty, avarice, vice of all.' 
kind-, not because wicked men have no com 
science, Oh. no, no! hut because wicked men, 
like a vicious horse, take the bits in their teeth 
and madly rush on in the way in which they 
know they cu,,ht not to go. They blindfold their 
judgment and try to make it seem right, but it's 
a failure; it dres not seem tight, but ends in 
death. 

Every day's dispatches tell us of the Judasea 
who have resisted the remonstrances <>f an abused 



1'HK LAW <>K CON80IBNOJ5 255J 

conscience, until they could bear its thunderings 
no longer and have gone out and hanged them- 
selves, or otherwise put an end to their despairful 
lives, only to wake up in that realm of woe where 
none can resist its power or quench the Ha me of 
its torment that ascendeth up forever and ever. 

Oh, if men would do what they verily think 
they ought to do, and like Saul, when they per- 
ceive they are doing what they ought not to do, 
ask in deep earnest, Lord, what will THOU have 
me to do? this sin-cursed world would be con- 
verted instanter into a sanctuary of purity of 
peace, and heavenly blessedness. Then there 
would be a universal jail delivery, and every con- 
vict would be on his knees asking, Lord, w hat- 
wilt thou have me to do? Then every gambling 
brothel would be turned into a prayer meeting; 
every drink-shop into a house of useful industry 
Then the Sabbath of God and the holy sanctuary 
would be respected, and the busy world would 
down brakes on all its tumultuous machinery. 
Then the nations would beat their swords into 
plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, 
and men would have war no more, 



£$$ THE LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 

Oh God, whose voice divine within 
Upbraids my soul for every sin, 
And when thy word has made me know 
The way in which I ought to go. 
Gives me no peace if 1 refuse, 
And the Divine behest abuse. 
That voice divine will never cease, 
Will never give me sweet release, 
From the corroding, painful bite. 
The fruit, of heeding not the right. 
That gnawing worm will never die, 
'Twill be my hell unless I try 
The true, the righteous way, to know. 
And knowing it therein to go. 
How can I bear devouring flame 
And dwell in everlasting shame, 
Which conscience by its own recoil, 
By self-coiivictjon, dread turmoil. 
Will e'er inflict upon my soul, 
While the eternal ages roll. 
Help me myself to exercise, 
And forward press to gain the prize 
Of peace within, a conscience void 
Of all offense, bliss unalloyed,. .->•-■• 



THE LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 255 

This will be mine, if deed and thought 
Be made subservient to the ought, 
And if I do what I think right 
In my heavenly Father's sight, 
'Twill be accepted, I'll not fear, 
When to the judgment I come near, 
He'll see my motive, judge my heart, 
And I shall have some humble part 
Among the men of honest thought, 
Who tried to know and do the ought. 
Of such, not all are Christian men; 
Some heathen feel the way, and when 
They verily think they're right, 
They 'ill stand approved, for lack of sight. 
The honest motive God will spare, 
Though wrong, 'twill his compassion share. 



266 THE LAW OF LOVE. 



The Law of Love. 



He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of 
Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, yea, Lord; 
thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, feed 
my sheep. — John XXI: 16. 

All possible questions touching Peter's qualifi- 
cations as an Apostle, were comprehended in this 
one question, lovest thou me? I shall awaken 
your religious thought this a. m. If I can so an- 
alyze the question as to render apparent the all 
comprehending idea that it suggests — lovest thou 
me. The first element to be considered, is that 
of love. This is the starting point of all char- 



THE LAW OF LOVE. 267 

acter whether bad or good. It is this that gives 
to human character its distinctive quality; no 
matter whether conformed in molds of virtue or 
of vice, love is its mainspring. Bad men and 
good men are moved by this element of character. 
So that while it is true as the scripture saith that 
love is the fulfilling of all law, it is also true on 
the same authority, that love is the root of all 
evil. 

Abstractly considered, the element of love does 
not determine moral character. It as often im- 
pels men in the wrong direction as in the right 
direction. Whether the bent be wrong or right, 
love is the elastic force. If its power culminate 
in the fulfillment of all law, it is all the same as 
if it culminate in the criminal disregard of law. 
Love carries one class to Heaven while it carries 
the other class down to Hell. Love, then, is no 
criterion of character. To determine this we 
have to look beyond the propelling force. The 
propelling force may move us now in one direc- 
tion, now in another, now in the right way, now 
in the way of evil. It depends altogether on the 
object of love. 



258 THE LAW OF LOVE. 

Hence the second element in our analysis is 
the ohject that inspires love. And here let it be 
premised that the object of love is personal. We 
talk about loving money, loving the world, mean- 
ing goods, chattels, property. But the language 
so used is inaccurate. We do not love gold or 
houses, or anything else impersonal. We love 
only rational beings, with a nature like our own 
that can reciprocate the sentiment. We speak 
of enjoying society. By that we do not mean 
that we love or enjoy the aggregation of people, 
church, lodge or club. Love belongs to our in- 
dividuality, and can be reciprocated only by in- 
dividual persons. It is these in their personal 
identity, 'not the aggregate whole as a society that 
we love. We talk about love of country — by that 
we mean love of the people that live in the coun- 
try. The rocks and rills, the woods and templed 
hills, we use by metonymy, or change of name 
for the people of the country, just as we use 

CROWN for KING. MITRE Or GOWN for PRIESTHOOD, 

sword for military occupation. We do not in 
exact language love any inanimate or irrational 
object, and oar character depends wholly on the 



fflUE LAW OF LOVt- 2f\<* 

object of our loye. If that object be self, inde- 
pendent of all others, then our love conforms our 
character in the mold of selfishness. Judas loved 
himself supremely. We call it. the Bihle calls 
jt, the love of money, whjch is the root of all evil, 
Rut we use the- term by what is called ' pjetony 
iny,"' The Bible uses it in that sense. Money 
has no value, that the selfisb man should love il 
farther than it contributes to himself personally, 
ft makes himself better off, more independent, 
more opulent; it fosters his personal pride, case, 
enjoyment. He loves huiself. Tie is a selfish 
man, puts himself before all others, betrays his 
friends for money becayse he loves himself, and 
money contributes to h[s self-gratification, no£ 
because it helps any body else, but because it 
helps himself. 
. A1J crime begins in selfishness. Self i> the ob- 
ject of the love that forms the mainspring of 
character in the highwayman, in the debaucbe, 
in the swindler, I^ove of self makes unfaithful 
husbands, bad fathers, disobedient children, dis ; 
eordant families, neighborhoods, states and na» 
tions, AH possible laws of virtue are condensed 



jHli l HE LAW OF LOVE, 

into the golden rule which prescribes the only 

proper object of love. 

In Christ's examination of Peter, preliminary 

to his life-work as his ambassador, he inquires 

only for the object of his love, because that alone 

can determine the moral character of any man. 

Is not every man known by his social affinities? 

That's the criterion by which we judge of every 
man. We know him by the company he keeps. 
Lovest thou a bad woman, it is because thou art 
& bad man. (.-rood men have no such affinity, 
Lovest thou low, profane, dissolute society: then 
there is but ( ne opinion about your moral char- 
acter. Lovest thou pure, refined, cultured, Chris- 
tian society; nobody doubts your own virtue; 
your status in the scale of virtue is fixed by the 
moral level of the people among whom you find 
vour friends and intimate associates. 

Jesus sets before Peter the highest object of 
human love, when he inquires, lovest thou me 9 
That question settled, all other questions are set- 
tled pertaining to his moral fitness to be his 
representative as an apostle. To love him is to 
love the living embodiment of all law, of all 



PHE LAW OF UiVK, > 

righteousness, of all perfection. In the heart of 
the man that loves him selfishness can have no 
quarter. Love to him means absolute self-abne- 
gation and entire consecration to tin' good cri 
other people. It means the regeneration of all 
the motives of the selfish heart, settling them all 
into lines parallel with the motives of the Savior 
himself. So that what Christ loves he loves, 
what Christ hates he hates, what Christ is and 
does he aims to be and to do. The question 
lovest thou me comprehends every other question, 
and being settled in the affirmative. He is pre- 
pared for his commission. " Feed my lambs, feed 
my sheep." 

And now it remains to analyze the command 
thus laid upon him. The term feed is significant. 
It implies more than appears on the surface. It 
implies hunger on the part of the lambs and 
sheep, an unsatisfied want in universal humani- 
ty, a starving condition, a great and suffering 
lack of something out of ourselves to quiet the 
clamors within us, and harmonize the warring 
elements of the world around us. This universal 
desideratum in human nature is called death, 



362 THE LAW OF LOVE. 

and the answering good, the divine antedote. is 
-called life. In his commission to Peter he is 
thinking of humanity in this state of want, per- 
ishing for lack of the bread and water, of which, 
if they partake, they shall hunger not, neither 
thirst any more. Hence the commission is. " feed 
my sheep." He says of himself, " I am the good 
shepherd, my sheep hear my voice and follow 
me, and I lay down my life for the sheep." 

ki It is expedient that I go away." Who will 
be the good shepherd? Who will feed the tender 
Jambs, and lead the sheep into green pastures 
and beside the still waters when. I am gone? The 
world is starving for the bread of God that 
cometh down from Heaven. I am that bread of 
life. The world wants me. 

It is wrenched with selfishness. Selfishness is 
the root of all its bitterness, the firebrand of all 
•ts woes, the instigator of all its crimes, the rivet 
of all its slaver}', the food of the worm of remorse 
that never dies, the fuel of the incipient flame 
within the soul that is never quenched. Selfish- 
ness spreads all the clouds of heathenism that 
darken f '"- J gentile world 1 am the light of life, 



THE LAW OF LOVE. 263 

the world wants me. 

As the Father hath sent me even so send I you 
to give the bread of life; give me to starving hu- 
manity. There is only one type of character 
that can do this — that is a Christly character, 
" Lovest thou me?" Am I, my aims, my de- 
sires, my perfect unselfishness, my crucifixion to 
the world and all worldly aims. Am I, the one 
commanding object of your love? .Yes. Then 
you are qualified to be the medium of my ap- 
proach to hungering humanity and to bring the 
bread of God to the lambs and sheep of my flock, 
not by what you teach, but by what you are. 
Not by the syllogisms of logic, but by the exhi- 
bition in your own person of him who is the way, 
the truth and the life. 

The sheep and lambs are not hungering for a 
theoretic knowledge of the component elements 
of the bread of God any more than a starving 
man is hungering for knowledge of the chemical 
combinations that enter into the manufacture of 
the bread he eats. It is bread in the concrete 
that he wants, for that alone can keep him from 
starving. So humanity is not hungering for 



264 THE LAW OF LOVE. 

platitudes, or for the scholasticism, or the hair- 
splittings of theological science. As well when 
they ask for bread give them a stone. Perishing 
humanity asks for no analysis of the bread of 
God. It is enough to know that the concrete, 
Divine human, God-man Christ, can fully and 
perfect]} 1 - answer the cravings of the soul. As 
bread he is accepted. The soul feeds on him, and 
is filled with all the fulness of God, without ask- 
ing how he stands related to the Father and the 
Holy Ghost, without asking how much of his per- 
son is human and how much is divine. 

Without asking whether he suffered a penal 
death to satisfy the demands of justice, or a vol- 
untary death to cleanse away sin and win the 
sinner by the power of his love. All these ques- 
tions are irrelevant to the soul hungering for the 
living bread. 

I want something to respond to the yearning 
wants of my hungering soul. Something that I 
can love, and that can give back a response of 
love. That is not the systematic theology of the 
schools. That is not catechism, or creed, or dog- 
ma, it is the person of the Divine Human Christ. 



THE LAW OF LOVE. ZbO 

I want him personified to me by one that loves 
him. One so transparent that Christ is seen 
through him in all his divine loveliness. There 
lave been many wise teachers in the world whose 
sayings were good and true. Confucius uttered 
many truisms and advised the world to be gov- 
erned by them. How much have those truisms 
done to save the people of China. With all that, 
Confucius taught (and he taught much that was 
true) the people of China are starving for the 
©read of Cod, and Christ is saying to us, feed 
them. He does not ask us, loVest thou the tru- 
isms that I or Confucius, or Socrates taught, but 
lovest thou me. The truisms of Confucius are 
very like those of the sermon on the Mount, and 
Confucius commanded respect' for them. As the 
result of his life and teachings we have Chinese 
character, Chinese civilization, Chinese religion. 
And we are sending them missionaries to feed 
"them the bread of God, for lack of which they are 
perishing. Tins bread is Christ. And the mis- 
sionary is asked, lovest thou me. as a living per- 
son? Otherwise feeding them with the sermon 
on the Mount will not satisfy their spiritual 



260 THE LAW OF LOVE. 

want. I am the way — not my ethical teachings. 
I as a personal living, divine, almighty eternal 
friend, who was dead, but yet alive, ever present, 
ever the same living personal Savior, from whom 
alone come the responses of love which the soul 
craves. 

Lovest thou me? Thou knowest all things; 
thou knowest that I love thee. Then, and only 
then, and on that condition, feed my sheep. 

This is the preliminary test of qualification, no 
less with respect to those who preside in the 
schools of letters and science, than to those who 
teach inthe school of religion. All teachers are 
commissioned to feed the lambs and lead the 
flock in the green, pastures of wisdom. Teachers 
of mind in any of the fields of thought to which 
the human soul is invited, poorly appreciate the 
high possibilities of their sacred calling who find 
the ultimatum of their work in the impartation 
of mental power to grapple with the mysteries of 
the Rule of Three, the complications of algebra, 
or the reasonings of geometry; who think wisdom 
consists in storing the memory with facts of his- 
tory or phil >sophy. Every teacher in whatever 



THE I, AW OF LOVE, 267 

department of learning, is ordained to feed the 
lambs either with the food of virtue, or else with. 
the poison of unbelief. And this means every 
parent, schoolteacher, college professor, platform 
lecturer, as well as gospel preacher and Sunday 
school worker. And in examining their qualifi- 
cations we instinctively ask, first of all, what is 
the ruling all controlling object of their love. We 
do not care to inquire about a teacher's church 
relations, his ethical notions, or his theological 
opinions, We only want to know the object on 
which his heart is "set. That determines his 
character, and character in the teacher by a law 
inherent in itself begets character in the taught, 
whether in the family, the school, or the church. 
Lovest thou me? If I could answer that ques^ 
tion with the assurance of the disciple to whom 
Jesus addressed it, '.' Lord, thou knowest that 1 
love thee/' my commission to feed his lambs 
would need no indorsement even though critics 
refuse assent to my doctrines. Not the d/xrtrineg 
bf the mind, but the love of the heart determines 
the fitness of the teacher to feed the lambs of the 
0OCk- Theology reduced to logical form ill the 



CHE LAW OF LOVE, 



brain is one tiling. Theology reduced tu practi- 
cal life, having its seat in the love of the heart is 
quite another thing. This is the theology that 
begins in faith, the faith which works by love, 
which purifies the heart, which overcomes tin 1 . 
world, and which alone can prepare tin- disciple-. 
of our Lord for the great commission; " Go ye 
into all the world, preach the gospel to every 
creature," not by the logic of words but by the 
eloquence of love. 

Give mi- the grace my Lord to know. 
Give me tin- grace himself to show. 
Himself the object of my love, 

all my acts and motives prove; 
For by my fruit my love is known. 
By no truisms can it be shown, 
Himself, not truth, nor law, nor creed, 
Himself is ail 1 crave or need, 
For if he hold the highest place 
In my affections, then his grace 
Will mold my life, will be my law, 
All nutriment from him I'll draw. 
How much 1 want, how great my need, 
flu k of God, the lambs to feed, 



THE LAW OF LOVE. 8S8 

Tis not the knowledge I've acquired. 

Nor fame to which I have aspired, 

My wisdom will but folly prove, 

Unless supremely him I love. 

The world was full of truth before 

The Savior came. He brought no more, 

He bore witness to the truth, 

And questioned doctors in his youth, 

But to the prophets added nought. 

Nor to the law a single thought. 

On it as on a rock he stood, 

Because 'twas holy, just and good. 

All that was true in Socrates, 

In Plato and in Pericles, 

That with the prophets harmonized. 

And was by Moses legalized; 

He witnessed and confirmed it all, 

And his command to great and small 

Was, do and teach what Moses taught. 

And what the Holy prophets thought, 

But all they taught you find in me — 

In me the truth the life you see. 

The holy law you cannot keep, 

With it, you cannot feed the sheep; 



"'70 THE. LAW OF LOVE. 

Iii me. the law 's reduced to bread, 
With which alone the lamb* are fed. 
Lovest thou me? and dost thou find 
< r n mk food for the starving mind: 
The truth 's the husk that holds tin 
Itself, is not the living bread. 
Who feeds on husks without the wheal. 
Will starve for lack of bread to eat. 
The BREAD and not the HUSK we need. 
With which the lambs and sheep to feed; 
Confucius gave the husks no 
Than Job, but failed the. world to bless, 
Because not truth but life we love, 
And he ignored life from above, 
He was a realist so called 
Within the world of sense installed, 
( 'ommandings and forbiddings he 
Relied on. but could not 
Beyond the veil the unseen One, 
Whose name to love, doth law outrun. 
His question was, dost thou not know 
The truth evolved from things below? 
That's but the husk it does not feed 
The immortal soul in starving need, 



THE LAW OF LOVE. 

We want an object we can love; 

We want response from One above; 

Onr love fulfills the laws demands 

Before it utters its com Mian Is; 

It outruns truth and goes before, 

To recreate and to restore; 

While yet the truth is not half told, 

Love does the character remold. 

Lovest thou Myself? My sheep then feed 

Of the command you have no need. 

Your spontaneity is law, 

Because from me your life you draw. 

I am the truth, the living bread; 

'Tis yours before the world to spread 

The banquet, and ray sheep bring in, 

And all the lambs astray in sin. 

They're in the deserts far and near. 

And in the mountains dark and drear: 

Go to the highway and the hedge; 

Go to the distant mountain ledge; 

Go everywhere the welcome tell, 

And all the wandering ones compel 

To throng the banquet Christ has spread, 

And feast their souls on living bread. 



272 THE GOLDEX RULE. 



The Golden Rule. 



Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart 
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is 
the first and great commandment. And the second is 
like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 
On these two commandments hang all the law and the 
prophets.— Mathew XXII: 37-40. 

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men 
should do to you, do ye even so to them for this is the 
law and the prophets. — Mathew VII: 12. 

It was the uniform habit of Jesus, when asked 
the question, " What must I do to be saved?" to 
give an answer that commended itself to the 
common sense of the enquirer. He never pre- 



THE GOLDEN RULE. 273 

scribed any hard conditions, but such as find ap- 
proval in the common mind, and such as are free 
from mystery. He prescribes no penances, no 
round of observances, or of laborious duties, and 
no detailed formalies of Christian doctrine. 

But on all occasions emphasizes love as the one 
great commandment, and the indispensable con- 
dition of moral good. This simple law of reli- 
gion silences all opposition. It takes all cavil 
out of the mouth of unbelief. It leaves no ground 
for infidelity to stand upon, because love is ad- 
mitted to be the deepest principle of character, 
and when its object is the ideal of absolute per- 
fection, its exercise begets results in the soul of 
man that all men admit to be good. This is the 
essence of a religion, the quality of which nobody 
can call in question. It is not essential to this 
point that the personal identity of the Christians' 
God be proved; let that be ideal if you please, 
only admit that the ideal is perfect — infinite in all 
great and good attributes; an ideal, to the like- 
ness of which man cannot approach without be- 
coming purer, happier, and in all conceivable re- 
spects better. The love of that ideal is Christ's 



THE GOLDEN RULE. 



invariable condition of salvation. This is the 
first and great commandment, to love goodness, 
be it personified in the being of a living God, or 
be it an abstraction comprehending the ideal 
qualities of the infinite God, this is immaterial. 
To love goodness itself is the highest ascent of 
character, no obiect of love can be conceived of 
higher, and the good resulting to the soul frana 
the love of that object is the highest obtainable 
good. " Love worketh no ill to his neighbor." It 
begets goodness, and this is never a passive, but 
an active principle, and its action terminates not 
in itself. It works outwardly; it is the inevitable 
law of its action to bestow itself on others. Love 
toward God necessitates love toward our neigh- 
bor, and our neighbor means any member of the 
human family. He that fell among thie 
whom the good Samaritan bestowed love, was a 
max. that is all we are told about him. We 
know nothing of his color or character, of his ori- 
gin or antecedents-; we only know that he was 
iu max; a certain man went down from Jerusalem 
to Jericho and fell among thieves. Being a man] 
he is our neighbor, and love to God implies love 



THE GOLDEN fll'l v , 27h 

to him. All claims to the former in the absence 
bf the latter go for nothing, The false-hearted- 
ness of the religious pretences of the Priest and 
Levite was proved when they passed by on the 
other side. Love to Ck>d would have detained them 
as it did the Samaritan in acts of love to suffer- 
ing humanity, regardless ol every other question, 
save the one question, is he a man? Our Savior 
tells ub that this principal of love constitutes th< 
essence of all religion. lv *hi these two com- 
mandments hang all the law and the prophets." 
The whole system <>f Christian theology is com 
prehended in this one simple law of love. This 
nobody finds fault with. All agree, bad men and 
good men agree, that so far religion is good. 
Every month is stopped here, and all the world 
is silent before God, 1 come then to a standstill. 
What need have 1 to argue the value of a prin- 
ciple that is by universal consant good, or vindi- 
cate a power that underlies ail human happi- 
ness. My duty as a preacher ends with an ap- 
peal to accept and come into full and cordial 
sympathy with the religion of Jesus Christ, all 
which is condensed into the golden rule, If lm . 



27fi THE GOLDEN RULE, 

man life be a failure, and not worth living with- 
out love as the basis of character and as the only 
condition of good, then why not surrender the 
whole soul to the dominion of this heaven-born 
power and be forever blessed, 

But while with one breath the world admits all 
that we claim for Christianity as expressed in the 
text, with the next breath it holds it responsible 
for the antagonisms, the debates, the ill blood 
and the cruelties that have cursed humanity in 
all ages. 

And interpreting the wordB of the Prince of 
Peace when he says, " I oame not to send peace 
on earth but a sword," as the tocsin of war, it 
pronounces against the religion that he taught as 
an evil and not a blessing, But it is easy to 
show that this conclusion is the result of blinds 
ness and of depraved understanding, Love to 
God, and love to our neighbor, always implies 
spiritual sympathy with God, likeness of char- 
acter, likeness of feeling, and purpose to maintain 
the principles of his holy law. 

A man cannot love God and at the same time 
ee>:inive at wickedness in his fellow man. and if 



THE GOLDEN RULE. 



he connive not at wickedness — wickedness is cer- 
tain to antagonize him. Love to our neighbor 
implies no complicity with our neighbors' wrong, 
but positive discountenance of it, which inflames 
passion, and engenders strife and ill will. Con- 
scientious resistance to the whiskey power which 
almost nobody at this day pretends to justify, be- 
gets the hate of the guilty parties that are identi- 
fied with it. So it was with the slave power, and 
so it is with all wrong. When Jesus says " He 
came not to send peace on earth but a sword, and 
that a man's foes shall be they of his own house- 
hold." he intends simply to forewarn his disci- 
ples that there is no affinity between sin and 
holiness; that there is a natural and eternal re- 
pulsion between righteousness and unrighteous- 
ness, and that the more entire and unreserved 
the love of the heart towards God and man the 
stronger that repulsion becomes, and this fact is 
interpreted as a belligerent spirit on the part of 
Christianity, to which is ascribed the manifold 
evils, the records of which interline the whole his- 
tory of the Christian era. Men look back over 
the records of the religious wars, persecutions, in-* 



??S FHE GOLDEX RULE. 

quisitions and crusades, of the last two thousand 
years and try to believe that the world would 
have been better and happier without Christiani- 
ty, that on the whole it has cost more than it is 
worth, and therefore it ought to he discouraged 
from further extension as a means of the world's 
civilization. All admit that its essence as ex- 
pressed in the text is unimpeachable. But be- 
cause it conflicts with human depravity — because 
it cannot connive at the sins and selfishness of 
men — it is counted as a foe to the peace of society-, 
and on the whole an evil, rather than a good in 
the world. 

But we must look below the events of history 
to determine whether Christianity be good or 
bad, We must look into its heart as we look 
into that of a man to determine the moral char- 
acter of his a-ction. And when we decide that 
any system of ideas is bad, that any religious or- 
ganization or religious law, called Christian, is 
bad. we must first inquire whether it be truly or 
falsely called Christian. 1 shall not be disputed 
when I assume that all is not Christian that is 
palled Christian, The burden now upon me is to 



ink GOLDEN RULE. 279 

show that Christianity rightly so called is good — 
good in its essence, good in its requirements, good 
in all its effects on man, on society, on the world. 
The text is a clear, comprehensive, condensed 
statement of what Christianity is. 

As the pure gold which is disseminated in mi- 
nute particles and veins, through the unsightly 
rocks of the mountain, is extracted by powerful 
machinery and condensed into a pure ingot of 
untold value, so the essence of Christianity under 
the divine discrimination of the Son of God is 
extracted from all the savings of the divine ora- 
cles, from all the law ami the prophets, and con- 
densed into a form, which, by the universal con- 
sent of manking, is called the Golden Rule. 

Whatever is different from this you have a 
right to oppose and to condemn. But you have 
no right to condemn Christianity. Whatever 
history shows to have been wrong in the name of 
Christianity, and contrary to the Golden Rule, 
you have a right to denounce and condemn. But 
whatever history shows to have been done in 
keeping with the spirit of the Golden Rule, you 
are bound to approve, for by universal consent 



280 THE GOLDEN RULE. 

that is right, Obedience to that leads nobody 
astray. Here is the divine standard to which all 
sentiments must be referred, and by which all 
character and conduct must be tried. And when 
I assert that Christianity seen from this stand- 
point (and it can be seen from no other) is ab- 
solutely, unconditionally, eternally good, I am 
not called upon to apologize for, or defend the 
countless wrongs done in all ages in the name of 
Christianity, any more than I am called upon to 
vindicate the spurious imitations of United States 
coin or counterfeit notes made in imitation of 
solvent currency. Neither the mint nor the bank 
is responsible for the frauds committed in their 
name. Nobody respects sound money the less 
because honest people have been cheated with 
bad money, and nobody proposes to stop coining 
good money because bad men' put in circulation 
spurious imitations. The main lever in infidel 
sophistry is, to hold Christianity responsible for 
the crusaders, the revolutions, the inquisitions, 
the persecutions, the hypocrisy, and wickedness 
carried on in the world under the cloak of reli- 
gion. I am not here to apologize for anything 



THE GOLDEN RULE. 281 

wrong in the church or out of the church. Chris- 
tianity is one thing, and wrong doing is quite 
another thing. And wrong doing within the pale 
of the so-called Christian Church, is no less wrong 
on that account. The degenerations of the church 
from the high and holy standard of the Apostolic 
age do not argue the degeneration of Christianity. 
The church did degenerate in different epochs 
and was guilty of many grave offenses, but truth 
never degenerates, it is eternally the same, and 
its instinct is to remonstrate against and resist 
wrong. Right and wrong are and forever must 
be antagonistic. Christianity itself is antagonism ; 
this is not denied. But will you hold Jesus 
Christ and his holy teachings responsible for the 
consequences for the conflict? He cannot make 
a truce with wrong; such a truce as everybody 
knows would be fatal to all that he came to ac- 
complish. Jesus himself went to the cross be- 
cause he refused to teach for doctrine the com- 
mandments of men; because he would expose the 
hypocrisy of the Pharisees, and refuse all com- 
plicity with wrongs and abuses in the name, 
either of law or religion. And will you hold 



_'■;_' THE GOLDEN RILE. 

Jesus responsible for that crnel tradgedy because 
he refused to make a truce with the maddened 
throng that cried, away with him, crucify him. 
and condemn as an evil the love and loyalty of 
his divine heart because wickedness revolted 
against it? Will you say religion in the heart of 
the prophet Daniel, was an evil because it doomed 
him to the lion's den. when he would not make a 
truce with his enemies who commanded him to 
neglect the worship of the living God. or charge 
upon Shudrach Meshack and Abednego the ven- 
geance that heated the burning fiery furnace 
seven times hotter than it was wont to be hi 
b ■■ tuse they w ire too religious to fall down and 
worship the golden image that the King had set 
up? Will you hold the holy martyrs responsible 
for the fires of the stake or the cruellies of the 
scaffold, and say that but for the inflexibility of 
their Christian faith, history would never have 
been called upon to record the sickening st< 
their death? is right, any the less right, be- 
cause wrong is eternally at war against it? Is 
Heaven to be impeached because the angels of 
darkness strive in vain to scale its holy battle- 



i,im<;\ mi B, 



ments and invade the sanctum sanctorum of the 
blessed? Xay, verily it is the essential condition 
of love to God, and love to man, to stand in for 
the right as God has declared it, and to stand in 
against all manner of wrong, But mark you, the 
weapons of the Christian's warfare are not carriaj 
but spiritual. ' Put up the sword within thy 
sheath, " was the command of Jesus to Peter 
when he smote off an ear from the high Priest's 
servant, " They that take the sword shall per- 
ish by the sword," and immediately he undid the 
rash violence by miraculously restoring the ear 
and healing the wound, The sword as a weapon 
of Christian antagonism was unknown in the 
Apostolic Church, The (4old.cn Rule approves 
only of spiritual weapons. If any organization, 
called a church, and claiming to be Christian in 
later times, undertook to promulgate its doctrines 
by the force of arms (and many such there have 
been), the moment it did that it ceased to be a 
Christian organization. And I am not here to 
defend any such organisation as good. If called 
Christian,, it is falsely so called. All warfare 
that is carried on under tlje banner of the cross 



284 THE GOLDEN Rl'It 

i? by no means Christian warfare. The crusades 
led on by Peter the hermit, for the recovery of 
the holy sepulchre from the possession of infidels 
of the Holy Land, never had any justification in 
Christianity, properly so called, and yet in his- 
tory the crusades were called a Christian war, 
and infidelity cites, that insane, superstitious 
campaign, as one of the evil results of the gospel 
of the Prince of Peace. 

You tell me truly that more than half thf 
nominally Christian world is held in ignorance 
by a tyrannical Priesthood to whose oppressed 
ts, the Bible is a sealed book, .aid the 
rights of conscience are denied, I am not here 
to defend that as a Christian system. When 
Christianity, which commands all men to search 
the Scriptures, degenerates into a blind force to 
blot out the light of the Bible and tyrannize ovei 
conscience, it ceases to be Christian, and becomes 
an ally of Satan to lead men to perdition. If the 
papal inquisition be called Christian, it is falsely 
so called.' T<> hold it up as an evidence thai 
Christianity is evil is no more pertinent than to 
condemn the sun because dark spots upon its 



'HE GO), DEN RULE, 



disk obscures its light. You tell me truly that 
the fires of martyrdom have not been confined to 
Popery that Protestantism as well as Popery has 
taken the sword and has its record of blood. My 
reply is, that Protestanism has no more right 
than Popery to lord it over God's heritage, as 
saith the Scripture. All appliances of power 
over conscience are anti-Christian. If Protes- 
tanism has at times admitted within her pale 
wicked men and forbidden practices, that fad 
does not change either the letter or the spirit of 
the Golden Rule. The wrong done is anti-Chris- 
tian, and Christianity remains the same uncor- 
rupted, holy, soul-saving principle. You tell me 
that the Pilgrim Fathers, those sainted sires of 
our New England life and civilization, hung 
witches, persecuted Baptists, and Quakers, and 
did other unjustifiable things. What of that? Is 
Christianity a failure on that account ? The 
prejudices of those men had been cast in the 
mold of English jurisprudence which hung 
witches all the same as murderers, The law of 
England framed after the Levitical law of the 
Jews, had justified it time out of mind, And it 



286 THE GOLDEN RILE. 

is not strange that the Puritans did not outgrow 
the superstition at onee By emancipating them- 
selves from English tyranny they did not hecome 
instantly free from English superstition. But 
Christianity is none the worse on that account. 
There is not a word in the New Testament to 
justify any of the acts of the Puritans that you 
and I and everybody now condemn. Is there a 
descendant of the Puritans now that docs not 
blush with shame and sorrow at the mention of 
that dark chapter in New England history? How 
black it looks in comparison with the light, the 
love and compassion, that shines out of the face 
of Jesus Christ as reflected by the Golden Rule. 
This is what I am defending, and not the mis- 
takes of misguided men. 

You tell me truly that the Protestant Church 
is subdivided in form, and assume that if it truly 
represented its divine head it would be a unit. 
In answer, I reply, that the Grand Army of the 
Republic is divided in form. Is it any the less a 
unit 9 When it comes into action does it not 
fight the same enemy, and defend the same Hag? 
Poes it not support the same constitution, obey 



THE GOLDEN RULE. 287 

the same commander, and share the same glory? 
Subdivisions in form do not necessarily imply 
subdivisions in spirit or purpose. They are the 
offspring of religious freedom which is the crown- 
ing glory of Protestantism. I am not here to ex- 
cuse sectarian strife. But isms do not necessi- 
tate strife or imply jealousy. Methodism means 
simply dissent from Ecclesiastical oppression, 
and the exclusiveness of a State Church that had 
grown opulent, proad, and spiritually paralyzed. 
This dissent on the part of John Wesly gave to 
the world the great Methodist Church, the right 
arm of our common Protestanism, which could 
no more be spared out of the Christian system of 
to day than ironclads could be spared from the 
navy. The same may be said of Presbyterianisnl, 
of Congregationalism, and of other sections of the 
Protestant Church. I have no plea to offer in 
justification of sectarian strife. All attempts at 
the aggrandizement of sect at the expense of 
truth and righteousness, break fellowship with 
Jesus Christ and forfeit the right to be called 
Christian. 

Be it conceded that grevious wrongs have been 



288 THE GOLDEN RULE. 

done in the name of Christianity, that there is 
much of hypocrisy, of can't and heartless formali- 
ty in the different churches on the part of indi- 
vidual members. I will be fair and admit what 
is justly claimed by sceptical men. Let the 
whole inventory of charges be collated and piled 
together into one thick black cloud, and when 
placed before the face of the Son of Righteousness 
as seen in the Golden Rule, they are no more to 
obscure its glory, than a telescopic speck upon 
the disc of the natural sun in the heavens. 

If Christianity be an evil and not a blessing, 
then wisdom requires that it be eliminated from 
the literary, the social, and moral life of the 
world. Begin the work of elimination in the re- 
public of letters. Take out of the literature of 
the world for the last two thousand years the 
Christian element, and what have you left? He 
is a pour scholar that does not know that Chris- 
tianity is the only fire that ever blazed in the 
soul of true poetry. All the noble and heroic ut- 
terances of heathen bards even, were Christian in 
spirit, and derived their lofty conceptions of vir- 
tue from the same unseen divine efflatus that 



THUS GOLDEN RULE. 28.9 

breathes in the Golden Rule. Tell me the name 
of the poet within the Christian age whose works 
have survived their author and reached a second 
edition, who sung in the key of infidelity, and ig- 
nored the inspiration of Gethsemane and the 
holy logic of the Golden Rule. Eliminate from 
Shakespeare, from Wordsworth, from Milton, 
from Tennyson, from Burns, from Whittier, Bry- 
ant and Longfellow, or even from Byron, the in- 
spiration that comes from the cross, and you have 
nothing left that is worth preserving. 

Infidel historians have written the records of 
human events. But if you eliminate from those 
records the part that Christianity has pla}^ed in 
the moulding of human affairs, and its confessed 
power in the amelioration of human life, the vol- 
umes and their authors would have gone together 
long ago into the grave of oblivion. Eliminate 
Christianity from your processes of education as 
infidelity has tried, and is trying to do, remove 
from your seats of learning in Europe and Ameri- 
ca, men eminent alike in Christian scholarship 
and Christian piety, and substitute in their place 
men who deny God in nature, in history, and in 



290 THE GOLDEN RULE. 

the human conscience, and exclude the light of 
the Christian Scriptures as the highest s >urce of 
wisdom for the use of the world, then what check 
have you left against human depravity, and what 
hope of virtue for the rising generation? 

Eliminate Christianity from the law of the 
land. This is possible only by the repeal of all 
the statutes on which rest the security of life, 
liberty and property. For all just law is a trans- 
cript of the decalogue and the Golden Huh-, am- 
plified and made applicable in judicial proceec^ 
ings. Christianity writes it upon the heart, and 
its unseen power in the conscience makes man a 
law unto himself, and is more potent than all 
written statutes or courtly decisions. If then we 
cannot spare Christianity out of the literature. 
the learning or the law of the world, without a 
backward step into barbarism, from what de- 
partment of life can it be spared? We cannot, if 
we would, eliminate it from our domestic life. 
The light of Christianity shines into all oug 
homes and quickens all our consciences whether 
we will or not. We can no more exclude it than 
we can exclude the light of the natural sun. 



iiik (JOLDEX RULE, 291 

While we Jive under the light of the Christian 
Scriptures, which shines out from all our civiliza- 
tion, that light will bless our homes in spite of 
our unbelief, "He causeth his sun to shine on 
the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on 
the just and on the unjust." If within any un- 
believer's home there resides the virtue of tem- 
perance, of chastity, beneficence and charity, it 
is because there shines into that home, and into 
the conscience of its inmates the light of Chris- 
tianity, These are all Christian virtues, and owe 
the power by which they are enforced to the gos- 
|el of Jesus Christ as it is preached in all Chris- 
tian churches, Why, then, refuse to own the 
power that saves us and our children from moral 
ruin? Why not come into full and cordial sym- 
pathy with the good that comes from Cod through 
faith -in Jesus Christ, without which human life 
is not worth living? For I tell you he is a poor 
scholar in the school of morals, who has failed to 
learn that Christianity is not only the best, but 
the only true code of morals ever given to the 
world, He is a poor scholar indeed, in the school 
of religion, who has not learned that all other re* 



U92 I'HE UOl.DKN RULE, 

ligions are a failure, and that Jesus Christ is the 
only name under Heaven whereby we can be 
saved. Pie is a poor interpreter of the signs of 
the times who thinks Christianity is waneing- 
and that its light is going out. Never did that 
light shine with brighter promise than to day. 
Never was the host of God's elect so united and 
invincible as to day. numerical weakness on the. 
Pacific Coast and subdivisions in external form 
to the contrary notwithstanding. Never did the 
little stone cut out of the mountain without hands 
enlarge itself as to day, and promise to fulfil its 
prediction to fill the whole earth, " Ethiopia is 
stretching out her hand unto God, and the islands 
are waiting for his law," Japan is filling our 
Christian colleges with her youth, and China is 
represented in every part of our industrial life 
and is learning how to recast the oriental civiliza- 
tion in Christian molds. Christianity within the 
last twenty years has unfettered four millions of 
the enslaved in this country, and exalted them to 
the dignity of citizenship, and is loosening the 
rivets of human bondage everywhere. Barrier.-. 
are felling before the advancing gospel, Tin- 



THE GOLDEN BXTLE, 298 

crescent has opened all her gates, and put it in 
the power of Christian England to protect the 
missionaries of the cross in every part of the Ot- 
toman Empire. And the starving millions of 
India are begging for the crumbs that fall from 
Christian tables. The highway of the Lord is 
being cast up everywhere. "The Gentiles ac- 
cept the light and kings the brightness of his 
coming." The day of Jubilee is approaching 
when every yoke shall be broken, when the gos- 
pel shall have free course and be glorified, and 
when 

" Jesus shall reign where ere the sun 
Does his successive journeys run; 
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore 
Till sins and tears oppress no more." 



^ifeii^ 



•H}4 RATIONAL RELIGION. 



Rational Religion. 



Come, now, let us reason together. Though your sins 
be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow.— Isaiah 
£: 18. 

I wish, in the concluding chapter of this hum- 
ble volume, to turn my hack on all theological 
literature, to silence the voice_ of Christian doc- 
trine, as it is formulated by the different branches 
of the Christian Church, and listen to the voice 
divine as it -peaks to the inner consciousness of 
my soul 

Criticism of late has much to say of the errancy 
and the inerrancy of Scripture. Whatever is said 



U \Tin\ w. RELIGION. 295 

of the text of Scripture "which is given by in- 
spiration of God," it cannot be said thai there is 
any errancy in the divine thought that is infal- 
lible. 

But human language, which is the chosen vehi- 
cle of the divine thought, is a clumsy, imperfect 
vehicle. The thought it undertakes to convey is 
divinely inspired. But the grammar is not in- 
spired; that being human and not divine is liable 
to be very errant. 

Sometimes the thought which it conveys is so 
obvious that "he that runs ma,- read, and the 
wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err of its 
meaning." To the men of all generations it con- 
veys the same truth and needs no interpreter 
save the still, small voice within the soul which 
reaffirms the written word. 

But the meaning of other portions of Scripture 
is less obvious. It has been differently under- 
stood in different periods of the world's history, 
and by different men of the same period equally 
honest and equally intelligent. Revisions in 
translation and modifications of idiom have often 
been resorted to and yet as a vehicle of the divine 



29(3 RATIONAL RELIGION. 

thought the written text is confessedly imperfect, 
while yet the thought which it embodies when 
manifested to reason is found infallible. 

The words selected to indicate my present 
theme invites us to the vantage ground of reason 
for a consideration of the one all-controlling sub- 
ject with which religion has to deal. 

Come, now, let us reason together about that 
great matter which puts the whole human family 
under indictment and arraigns every individual 
of the race at the bar of divine justice for trial; 
on account of which it is written in history that 
it repented the Lord that he had made man upon 
the earth, and which caused the fountains of the 
great deep to be broken up for the drowning of 
the world dead in trespasses and sins, which 
evoked the law from Sinai, warnings and en- 
treaties, expostulations and threatenings from the 
mouth of the holy prophets, and finally brought 
the son of God clown into our depraved humani- 
ty to repair its ruin, and at the expense of his 
own most precious and immaculate life be the 
Savior of the world. 

Our sins arc the procuring caus*e of all the woe 



RATIONAL RELIGION. 207 

that flesh is heir to, but for which all the shad- 
ows that becloud our human life would be turned 
into the sunshine of a cloudless Heaven, and the 
Bong of " peace on earth and good will to all 
men " would be sung forever and ever. " Come, 
now, let us reason together" about our sins. The 
fact of their being and of their blighting power is 
a fact of consciousness. The indictment is writ- 
Ten by the finger of God in the heart of all men, 
who, with universal consent have entered the 
plea of guilty, so that without the testimony of 
revelation, we know that "death hath passed 
upon all men for all have sinned." 

All men " find a law in their members warring 
against the law of their mind and bringing them 
into captivity to the law of sin, which is in their 
members," and whether expressed or unex- 
pressed, the confession is pertinent to all. " Oh 
wretched man that I am who shall deliver me 
from the body of this death?" How shall I be 
just with God? 

A full and satisfactory response to this uni- 
versal inquiry, is the high and only end at which 
true religion aims. To this end preachers of 






£93 RATIONAL RELIGION. 

righteousness were called in the patriarchal age, 
. and prophets were ordained in the Leviti- 
cal age, and the ministry of the Christian gospel 
on the part of apostles and teachers was estab- 
lished under Christ in the Christian age. all in 
every age working with the same motive ami as- 
pirins: to the same end, viz: this to answer the 
question of the human soul. "How shall I be 
just with God? Though your sins be as scarlet 
hall hi' as whit- as snow, though they be 
red like crimson, they shall be as wool." 

An 1 now the great milter of concern to the 
ainner is to know the condition on which this 
1 consummation can he realized. How can 
the deep stains of guilt in my soul he washed! 
out? How van I he as if I had never sinned? 
How <an 1 be acquitted and justified before God? 
This question is not peculiar to any one age or 
nation. It is instinctive to the human race of 
every age. and of every type of civilization, and 
lias given rise to every conceivable form ot reli- 
gious rites from the cruel immolation of human 
victims on the bloody altars of pagan idolatry to 
the penances, the oblations, the ritualistic, fasts, 



feasts and ceremonials of both Jewish and Chris- 
tian devotions. 

But in the chapter from which the text is 
taken, God repudiates all the externals of reli- 
gion, which for ages had ministered to the sensu- 
ous and unsatisfying demands of a cold, legal and 
unspiritual obedience, and invites the laboring 
and heavy laden, borne down under the weight 
of conscious guilt, saying, " come, now, let us rea- 
son together." He sends them not to the Tal- 
mud, or to the traditions of the devout and 
learned. But calls them directly to himself, to 
hold spiritual counsel and be instructed in the 
way of peace. 

''To what purpose is the multitude of your 
sacrifices unto me? Saith the Lord, I am full of 
the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed 
beasts, and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, 
or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to 
appear before me, who hath required this at your 
Bands to tread my courts? Bring no more rain, 
oblations, incense is an abomination unto me, the 
new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assem- 
blies., I cannot away with; your new moons and 



800 RATIONAL RELIGION. 

your appointed feasts ray soul hateth. And 
when ye spread forth your hands I will hide 
mine eyes from you, when ye make many prayers 
I will not hear." 

What, then, shall I do? How simple the re- 
sponse. Wash you, make you clean, put away 
the evil of your doings from before mine eves, 
cease to do evil, learn to do well. Seek judg- 
ment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, 
plead for the widow. "Though your Bins be as 
scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though 
they be red like crimson, they shall !><• as wool." 

This is the divine idea of religion, the only 
idea that reason can accept as of divine authority-. 
The external rites of religion, the formulated doc- 
trines of religion, the organized machinery of re- 
ligion, so far as they .-culminate in the end that 
God by the mouth of his holy prophet announces 
as the mark for the pride of our high calling, viz: 
to 'make us cease to do evil and learn to do well, 
are worthy of our acceptance. And so far as 
they aim at some other end and come short of 
this, they are useless to men, and abhorrent 
alike to reason and to God. 



RATIONAL RELIGION, 301 

The text and centext is the gospel according to 
Isaiah, and it is in order here to remark that it is 
the gospel according to Christ and the Christian 
Apostles. For there is but one gospel of salva- 
tion approved of God, and whether preached by 
patriarchs and prophets of the olden time, or by 
saints and apostles under the New Testament 
dispensation, it culminates in the same spiritual 
result, viz: loyalty of heart and conformity of life 
to the law and will of God. 

The prophet Mica reduces the whole gospel to 
an aphorism, when he says, " he hath showed the 
oh man what is good, and what doth the Lord re- 
quire of thee but to do justly to love mercy and 
walk humbly with thy God!" And this he says, 
after first intimating the insufficiency of all ex- 
ternal rites. Whether under the law or under 
Christ, there is but one method divinely approved 
by which to overcome evil in human character, 
and beget the fruits of spiritual salvation, and 
that is by an appeal to reason. The invitation 
to all men is, "come, now, let us reason together." 
Give reason its sway. Do what you know yon 
ought to do; "cease to do evil; learn to do well." 



303 RATIONAL RELIGION. 

If there be in .Scripture language any thing 
that seems to justify the sentiment that God pre- 
determined the moral destiny of his creatures 
and by his own arbitrary power necessitated their 
conduct to conform their history to the plan thus 
decreed, then there must be errancy either in the 
thought of the writer, or else in the language 
which he uses as the vehicle of his thought. 

Proverbs, twentieth chapter, first verse, reads 
thus: "The King's heart is in the hand of the 
Lord; as the rivers of water he turneth it whith- 
ersoever he will." 

[f by that statement, the writer means, thai 
God arbitrarily controls the volitions of the King, 
and necessitates his action, as the power of gravi- 
ty necessitates the course of a river in a pre- 
scribed channel, then he contradicts the known 
laws of reason, and there must be errancy either 
in his thought or his language. If he means 
simply to say. that God is wiser than men, and 
that in appealing to the reason of the King, he, 
by the use of motives more spiritual and more 
convincing than those that men are able to use, 
can lead him to go in the way in which he wo ild 



RATIONAL RELIGION. 

have him to go, then the law of moral action <>n 
God's part, though more effective in degree, is the 
Same in kind us the same law on man's part. 
God can no more force the heart of the Kingthan 
one man can force the heart of another man. The 
human spirit is as free as the Divine Spirit. This 
is the condition "'sine qua non " to moral respon- 
sibility, without which reason is dethn ned, and 
man is reduced to a link in the chain of natural 
car.se and < ffect, over which lie has no more con- 
trol than the ox which hears the yoke lias over 
the driver that wields the goad. 

The Psalmist in predicting the advent of the 
Mesiah, says, " thy people shall be willing in the 
day of thy power," and commentators have in- 
ferred from this language, that God, by arbitrary 
power, forces the volitions of his people, and com- 
pels them to be willing. But reason holds every 
man morally responsible, and refuses to accept 
either credit »or discredit for volitions or action 
not original in man's own independent will, and 
the thought of commentators, though seeming to 
find sanction in the words of the inspired poet, 
must be errant and not in harmony with the di- 



3)i RATIONAL RELIGION. 

vine thought. 

But commentators who teach the passiveness 
of the human will and its enforced subjection to 
the Divine will, draw their strongest argument 
from the history of Pharao in that wonderful 
drama which prefaced the exodus of the children 
of Israel out of Egypt. 

The story runs thus: The Lord commissioned 
Moses to demand of Pharaoh the release of his 
chosen people, and at the same time assured him, 
saying, I will harden his heart that he shall not 
let the people go. Then follows the history of 
twelve successive plagues, each of which caused 
the heart of Pharaoh to relent and promise to let 
the people go But God again, and again, and 
again, hardened Pharaoh's heart, and caused him 
to go back on his promise and refuse to let them 
go, until finally the work of the destroying angel 
created a panic, which set on foot the hosts of 
Israel in a march toward the Red Sea, when God 
again hardened the heart of the Egyptians, the 
whole rank and file of whom started in pursuit to 
witness the miraculous deliverance of the chosen 
people, and to avert the doom which was prear- 



RATIONAL RBLIGtoN. 805 

ranged in the counsels of Heaven. Every act in 
the drama was apparently necessitated of God as 
part of the Divine plan. Each actor was acting 
under.the irresistable will of God. And yet the 
same commentators hold Pharaoh responsible for 
his disobedience by resorting to the old paradox 
of Divine Sovereignty on the one hand, and man's 
free agency on the other, to reconcile, which cal- 
vinistic theologians have in vain exhausted all 
their resources time out of mind. 

Reason revolts at the whole theory and puts us 
upon a dilemma, one horn or the other of which 
we must choose. Either the story is untrue, or 
else the language must be so modified as t<> re- 
lieve it of the gross absurdity of compulsion on 
the part of God, and moral i-esponsibility on the 
part of Pharaoh. 

If God arbitrarily hardened Pharaoh's heart 
that he should not let the people go, and then 
brought retribution upon him for the disobedience 
that himself had instigated, then there is no lan- 
guage, or logic, or device under Heaven that can 
reconcile the theory with the known truth that 
righteousness and justice are the habitation of 



;; 1-3 :: vrroXAL RELIGION. 

his throne, and that mercy and truth are the 
stability of his empire. It involves an absurdity 
at winch all the instincts of the rational soul re- 
volt, and compels a solution of the language of 
history which shall conform it with the known 
laws of reason. "Come, now, let us reason to- 
gether." God is infinite in his being. He is sub- 
ject to none of the limitations of time or of space 
that circumscribe our purposes. We who live in 
time, and whose experiences are all a succession 
H events related to each other in the order of 
past present and future, do not understand the 
vast scope of the Infinite mind who lives in on ■ 

. ! present. We who can occupy different 
p >sitions in space only in succes ive periods of 
time, do no; r a lily comprehend how infinity can 
occupy all positions in spac-3 at the same time, 
God, who lives in absolute space is independent 
of the measurements which we apply in the sub- 
divisions of space, lie is also independent of 
calendars and chronometers, by which we fix 

in time. As he is everywhere in infinite 
space, so he is in infinite duration. Of himself 
he never speaks in the past or future tense. He 



KATIONAI. RELIGION, 307 

never says I was yesterday, or J will be to-mor- 
row. God is to-day lie is forever. He is no 
elder now than at the dawn of creation. He will 
be no older at the end than at the beginning of 
time. "To him there's nothing; old appears. To 
him there's nothing new." If all the experience 
of our three score and ten years could he con- 
densed into one day then one day would he to us 
as three score and ten years. We should he as 
tfoung at the end as at the beginning. 

With God, '"a, thousand years are as one day, 
•and one day as a. thousand years," then why not 
ten or a hundred thousand? lie lives in all eterni- 
ty, the whole of which is present reality. Gethscm- 
ane is with God. A present fact when Adam was 
created, a present fact now. It never was. It 
never will BE. It always is. 

Without this understanding of God's ubiquity 
and his independence of time making it true that 
all duration is to him as one day, and one day as 
all duration, it is impossible to interpret the Bihle 
so as to escape fatalism on the one hand, and en- 
tire freedom from moral responsibility on. the 
other. 



RATIONAL KELIGIOX. 



But there is a better and truer conception of 
revealed truth. Be it conceded that man is just 
as independent in his volitions as God is. Be it 
conceded that no events are future with God; 
that every act and purpose of every man, with all 
their consequences, are present realizations, and 
in his mind are matters of history, long before 
known in time, then it is plain that God can talk 
about them as matters of history long before the 
parties to them were born. That is what is 
meant by living in eternity. It is ;is if time were 
annihilated. God's knowledge is independent of 
time. With him there is no succession of days, 
and years, and cycles. It is "he that sitteth 
upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants 
thereof are as grasshoppers that stretcheth out 
the heavens as a curtain and spreadeth them as 
a tent to dwell in." He is outside of the diuri al 
and annual revolutions that make our calendar. 
He is independent of all time and lives in all 
eternity. But though so high and so ubiquitoae, 
he saith, " to this man will I look even to him 
that is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembleth 
at my word." Such a man was Moses; putting 



RATIONAL RELIGION. iiUM 

himself within the limitations of time and space 
in which Moses dwelt, he spoke to him in lan- 
guage, and employed modes of thought that a 
finite mind could understand. 

When he said to him, I will harden Pharaoh's 
heart, that he will not let the people go, concede 
the thought that the events about which he talked 
as in future time, were as actual history already 
accomplished in his mind. To God there is no 
past; there is no future, but eternity is all pres- 
ent to him. Then, what is prediction to Moses is 
to himself actually transpiring now. 

When he tells Moses I will harden Pharaoh's 
heart, it is all the same as if he had said, you 
can rest assured of this one thing, Pharaoh's heart 
will be hardened, and he will not let the people 
go, I will be responsible for the fact, for with me 
it is an accomplished fact, but with you a future 
event. God does not predict future events be- 
cause he has predestinated them, but because all 
events are present to his infinite comprehension. 
If men are doomed to evil it is by reason of their 
own voluntary choice and not by reason of any 
necessity growing out of God's foreordination. If 



310 RATIONAL RELIGION. 

the language of the Bible teach a different lesson 
it is because of the human element in revelation 
which fails often, because human, to be a true 
vehicle of the divine thought. It is the office of 
reason which is no less inspired of God than the 
sacred oracles, to discern below the verbage of 
human speech the spiritual message which alone 
is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, and for in- 
struction in righteousness. 

Moses was commissioned to go and reason with 
Pharaoh who held under the yoke of bondage a 
million, less or more, of the children of Abraham, 
whose redemption, according to promise, was about 
to be accomplished. The sudden emancipation 
of such an army of slaves by voluntary act on 
the part of the King was too much to be ex- 
pected, and Moses was forewarned of the desper- 
ate resistance with which his message would be 
met. God could not make the King willing in 
the day of his power by any moral necessity. He 
is supreme over nature. He could obstruct, and 
cripple the purposes of fhe King, and bring sud- 
den destruction upon him by natural causes, but 
he could not crush his will or compel his obedi- 



RATIONAL RELIGION. 81 1 

ence. He could drown the old world in a flood 
of waters, and stamp out their wickedness. That 
is one thing. To compel their volitions and make 
them willing to obey him is quite another thing. 
He could commission Noah, a preacher of righte- 
ousness, to reason with them. That is the ut- 
most that God can do to turn men unto righte- 
ousness. 

The Apostle Paul preaches the doctrine of elec^ 
tion in the ninth of Roman?, where ha combats 
the Jewish notion that salvation belongs to the 
house of Tsrael exclusively, and vindicates the 
chances of the Gentiles on the condition of faith. 

" He will have mercy on whom he will have 
mercy," and the Jews have no more claim to 
mercy than the Gentiles. " He will have mercy 
on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will 
be hardeneth." If this language means that God 
arbitrarily hardeneth some, and makes them ves- 
sels for destruction, it contradicts not only the 
known laws of reason but the plain declaration 
of other inspired writers. " For God is not 
tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man. 
But every man, when he is tempted, is led away 



6VI RATIONAL RELIGION. 

of his own lust and enticed." 

And though the language seems to indicate 
passiveness on the part of men, like clay in the 
hand of the potter, who makes one vessel to honor 
and another to dishonor, it cannot mean more 
than the right of God to be impartial in showing 
mercy. The Jew has no right to honor because 
he is a Jew. He is made of the same clay as the 
Gentile. The question of honor or dishonor de- 
pends not on nationality but on faith. And on 
that condition the potter can make the outcast 
Gentile a vessel unto honor. 

But leaving this much mooted and much 
abused subject, let us reason together for a mo- 
ment upon the subject of atonement. 

The writers of the Old Testament conceive 
of God as one like unto themselves, and of 
his judicial dispensation like that of a human 
ruler. He is represented as an angry God threat- 
ening vengeance upon his disobedient subjects, 
and " visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon 
the children unto the third and fourth genera- 
tion." And commentators by literalizing. and 
materializing the metaphors of Scripture which 



RATIONAL RELIGION. 313 

are largely impregnated with the human element 
and without the aid of reason, fail as a vehicle of 
the divine thought, reduce the divine jurispru- 
dence to the level of a human court, and the 
spiritual retribution consequent on disloyalty of 
heart to the Divine Government, to the phenome- 
nal punishment which a human court inflicts as 
atonement for overt crime and as a terror to evil 
doers. Overt transgression is the only transgres- 
sion of which a human court can take cognizance. 
But the judgment seat of God is all out of human 
sight. It is fixed in the soul itself, and its retri- 
butions arc unseen and spiritual, clue not only to 
the culprit in prison convicted of overt crime, but 
to multitudes exempt from all phenomenal pen- 
alty, but who, by looking to lust, by indulging in 
hatred, in covetousness, in spiritual wickedness 
of any kind, have committed adultery, or mur- 
der, or idolatry in the heart. The penalty goes 
with the spiritual motive as a natural sequence, 
and in the divine court the unseen motive is the 
only thing on trial. As the motive is unseen and 
spiritual so is the penalty. 

But commentators who materialize the divine 



jurisprudence must needs incorporate into their 
theological systems a phenomenal penalty. The 
law has been broken, and the dignity of the Law 
Giver can be vindicated only by the retaliatory 
pain of the transgressor. Either he or his sub- 
stitute must suffer penalty as the condition in- 
dispensable whereupon God can be just, and jus- 
tify the sinner. So the good Savior, the immacu- 
late Son, holy, harmless, undefined and separate 
from sinners, is subjected to a malefactor's death 
in order to satisfy the broken law and vindicate 
the Divine honor. Then follows the song: 

"There's nothing great or small 
That's left for me to do, 

Jesus paid it all — 

All the debt I o.ve." 
The gospel, according to Isaiah, says we have 
much to do. " Wash you. make you clean, put 
away the evil of your doings. Then your sins, 
though they be as scarlet, shall be as white as 
snow." 

But some one will interrupt me here ami say 
3 r ou are a moralist, you are going to be saved by 
your own good works, and not by the cross. Not 



RATIONAL RELIGION, 315 

quite so, my friend. The cross of Christ means 
one thing to you. It means quite another thing 
to me. 

When Dam on d volunteered to be a hostage for 
his friend Pythias under sentence of death, he 
did it to save Pythias, and if need be lose his own 
life in the undertaking. His motive was to save, 
not to suffer penalty. He was actuated solely by 
love to Pythias. To save him he was willing to 
risk the stroke of execution. Pythias, you re- 
member, was faithful to his promise, and returned 
at the appointed time to suffer the penalty. This 
act of fidelity on his part, and of love on the part 
of Damond, so wrought upon the heart of Dyoni- 
eius, that he reprieved the prisoner and sent the 
two friends away rejoicing under the royal bene- 
diction. Jesus did not, like Damond, offer 
himself as a hostage to a King who was up in his 
wrath and must have a victim. The Father de- 
sired the pain neither of the sinner or his substi- 
tute. He wanted " all men to be saved and come 
to the knowledge of the truth." and he sent his 
son into the world as he sent the prophets before 
him to reason with the world, that the world 



316 RATIONAL RELIGION. 

through him might be saved. Jesus tells us in 
plain language why he came into the world. "To 
this end was I born, and for this cause came I 
into the world, that I should bear witness to the 
truth," and as John says, to manifest the love of 
the Father. Says he: "I proceeded forth and 
came from God. And now ye seek to kill me, a 
man that has told you the truth which I have 
heard from God." His first sermon, which is the 
key note of the whole gospel, reasons of righte- 
ousness of temperance, and of judgment to come, 
" except your righteousness exceed the righteous- 
ness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye can in no 
case enter int > the kingdom of Heaven." 

The great end of his mission was to strip from 
religion all its material investments and hyp-air- 
ing in a Hood of spiritual light to expose the rot- 
tenness and perfunctory deadness of the dominant 
classes, b >th in church and state, and emancipate 
the human mind from spiritual bondage into fch& 
freedom with which himself makes free. He did 
not come to reconcile God unto the world. "God 
was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." 
And he makes the same appeal, both in the Old 



RATIONAL RELIGION, 317 

and New Testament. " Come, now, let us reason 
together " to the end, that your sins may be blot- 
ted out. Isaiah and Jesus come with the same 
message. They renounce alike the hollow cere- 
monials of religion, and demand the spiritual 
service of the heart. 

Of this the ruling classes were intolerant and 
instigated the masses to cry out, " away with 
him, crucify him," and when the maddened 
throng had finished the cruel deed of murder, 
then, and not till then, did the voice of reason 
avail to break the obdurate hearts of the guilty 
parties, and mold them for salvation. The voice 
of reason was more irresistable in his death than 
in his life, and when no other power divine or 
human was able to turn them unto God, the flow 
of innocent blood which stained their souls, and 
the dying prayer for their forgiveness that greeted 
their ears, wrought out a result which no other 
power on earth or in Heaven could effect. Crest 
fallen, terrified and convicted through and 
through of a crime from which no other name 
under heaven among men could save them ex- 
cept that of the bleeding victim at their feet, they 



818 RATIONAL RELIGION. 

wring their hands, and cry out in anguish ©f 

heart, " Men and brethren, what shall we do? 
Repent, and be baptized in the name of this same 
Jesus, for the remission of sins.' 1 

Thus it is that the blood of Jesus Christ 
eleanseth from all sin. It is no better than water 
spilt upon the ground unless it work out a spir- 
itual result in the hearts of men. And atone- 
ment is nothing to us without consciousness that 
our sins make us " particeps criininis " in the 
guilt of " crucifying him afresh and of putting 
him to an open shame/' 

But when convicted of sin that is spiritually a 
thorn in his crown, a nail in his hands, and a 
spear in his side, then as we are won to him, as 
our only refuge, we can with deep meaning say, 
" I am saved by the blood of the crucified one. 
He was wounded for my transgressions. He was 
bruised for my iniquities, the chastisement of my 
peace was upon him, and with his stripes I ana 
heated." 

But once more. "Let us reason together'' on 
the subject of the New Birth. 

The moral transformation of the sinful soul 



RATIONAL RELIGION. 319 

under a supernatural influence^ is better realized 
experimentally, than explained theoretically. 
Every man who turns practically from a course 
of life that his conscience disrespects, to one that 
puts him in harmony with himself and with the 
known laws of righteousness, with a settled reli- 
gious purpose to continue loyal to God and to his 
own moral convictions, has been born again in a 
practical sense. But the formula as Jesus stales 
it to Nicodemus, is an abstruse metaphysical 
proposition as difficult to explain in terms of lan- 
guage, as was the recovery of sight to the man 
that was born blind. He could only say, where- 
as I was blind, now I see. 

The common orthodox conception of religions 
conversion is that the subject of it is passive; that 
his spiritual blindness is natural, he was born 
blind, and as helpless of recovery as were the 
eyes of him that was miraculously restored to 
sight. And theologians philosophize about total 
depravity, and human helplessness, and super- 
natural relief, taking the condition of the man 
blind from his birth as typical of the spiritual 
condition of all men, and make out a plausible 



320 



RATIONAL RELIGION. 



theory, which is incorporated as a main item in 
the confession of the church. 

But the New Testament has no sympathy with 
fine spun theories. It does not assume that men 
are horn spiritually blind. One man was born 
ocularly blind, and Jesus, to convince the Phari- 
sees of his own supernatural power, restored him 
to sight. The human race are not born ocularly 
blind. And the one man so born does not typify 
the moral condition of the race. A light shines 
in the soul of every rational being, and a voice 
divine says to every one, this is the way, walk ye 
in it. Tlu New Testament always addresses men 
as responsible agents and tells them to work out 
their own salvation, and assures them that this 
is possible, for the reason that they don't have to 
w<»rk alone, for it is ''God that worketh in them 
to will and to do." 

The Divine Spirit surrounds us all as the air 
we breathe, and as atmospheric air vitalizes our 
bodies, so the Holy Spirit vitalizes our souls. 
But neither body or soul can be vitalized without 
voluntary action, and the Scriptures command 
action: "Wash you, make you clean, put away 



BATIONAI RELIGION. 321 

%he evil of your doings, work out your own salva- 
tion." 

Neither the Prophets or Christ ever preached a 
new birth in answer to the question, what shall 
1 do to be saved? Jesus never formulated the 
doctrine but once in all his earthly life. He 
preached as Isaiah, and as John the Baptist did. 
He reasoned like St. Paul of righteousness, of 
temperance, and a judgment to come. When in- 
quired of by a certain lawyer what he should do, 
he referred him to the commandments as summed 
up in the Golden Rule which ho illustrated by 
the parable of the Good Samaritan, and said, ' v go 
and do thou likewise." Take your example not 
from the Priest and Levite who passed by the 
man that had fallen among thieves, but take 
your example from the outlawed Samaritan with 
whom the Jews would have no dealings, who 
went to the man by the wayside despoiled of his 
money, of his raiment, and left wounded and half 
dead, set him on his o,vn beast, took him to an 
inn and took care of him, going down into his 
pocket for the bottom penny to pay for the care 
of him in Ins absence when he went away. "Go," 



322 RATIONAL RELIGION. 

said he, to the lawyer, " and do thou likewise." 

And to the young ruler who had kept all the 
commandments from his youth up, he said. " Sell 
that thou hast and distribute to the poor, and 
thou shalt have treasure in Heaven.'' lie did not 
tell either of these men "ye must be born again," 
but " love thy neighbor as thy self." And the 
Epistles of Paul emphasize the same conditions 
of discipleship. "That they do good that they 
be rich in good works ready to distribute, ready 
to communicate," that is. be socially frien lly with 
their neighbors. 

When John preached the baptism of repent- 
ance, he said nothing of the new birth, but told 
all to .'* bring forth fruits meet for repenta 
And when they asked specifically " what shall w* 
do," he said, " let him that hath two coats give 
to him that hath none, and he that hath meat 
let him do likewise.'' When the publicans who 
had a bad reputation for extortion asked, " what 
shall we do," he told them to "exact no more 
than was due." And when the soldiers asked the 
same question, he told them to "do violence to 
no man. and be content with their wages." In 



RATIONAL KICLHIION, 828 

the language of the Prophets; " Cease to do evil, 
learn to do well. Do justly low merry ami walk 
humbly with thy God." 

In all this he does not ignore the work of the 
Holy Spirit though he says nothing about it. He 
speaks to them as if there were no Holy Spirit, 
knowing full well that every right volition is re- 
inforced by the voice divine in the soul. Once, 
and only once, did Jesus formulate the mysteri- 
ous postulate of the new birth, 

Nicodemus, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, a ruler 
of tin 1 Jews, holding the highest rank in the 
councils, both of Church and Slate, eminent alike 
for his learning and his personal purity, came by 
night to Jesus to reason with him, and to confess 
that he was convinced of his divine mission, 
>L We know that thou art a teacher come from 
God." 

In this case Jesus must needs get a purchase 
under the self righteousness of the Pharisee, who 
had kept nil the commandments and could defy 
criticism of his outside life, tried by the law of the 
Pharisees. He was a gentleman of culture, and 
Jesus could do no less than reciprocate bis cour- 



6'li: RATIONAL RELIGION, 

tecy. rf he had said to Nicodemus, " wash yooi 
make you clean, put away the evil of your do- 
ings," it would have been an impertinence, If 
he had said to him as he said to the lawyer] 
keep the commandments and thou shalt live, it 
would have been as ill timed as to exhort the 
Lord Bishop of London to respect the Rubric, 
On the outside of his life Jesus could hot propose 
amendment without doing violence to the rules of 
common courteoy. Hence avoiding invidious, 
comparison between the religion of Nicodemus 
which was ceremonial and legal, with that spir- 
itual religion which begins in the heart, and 
whose beatitudes are all unseen and spiritual, he 
exhorts to no religious duty, but proceeds to 
enunciate a principle that underlies all true re- 
ligion, without the practical operation of which 
true religion is inconceivable. The aphorism 
under which it was propounded was a surprise to 
Nicodemus, but it opened the way to the convent 
Hatimi that followed, without seeming protrusive, 
Jesus mentions two elements as conditions of 
the new birth. " Except a man be horn of water 
and of the Spirit he cannot sec the kingdom of 



RATIONAL RELIGION. 325 

God." By some, this is supposed to refer to the 
rite of Christian baptism, and such make that 
rite a condition of the new birth. But water bap- 
tism is not the thing referred to. Nicodemus had 
been born of water. lie was a clean man. He 
had practiced all the ceremonial purifications 
known to the Levitical code, and in these cere- 
monial rites his religion ended. External rites 
were a matter of conscience with him. He verily 
thought he ought to do them, hence for him, it 
was right to do them. 

This, as one condition of a satisfactory frame 
of mind, ought he to have clone. If conscience 
impelled him to fast twice a week and pay tithes 
of all he possessed, to offer incense and make 
many prayers, this ought he to have done, but 
not to leave the other condition of the new birth 
undone. Except a man be born of water, be ex- 
ternally blameless, and also of the Spirit, that 
divine unseen life giving power without the con- 
trolling guidance of which all ceremonial rites 
become hypocrisy, he cannot see the kingdom of 
Grod. . Nicodemus with all his wisdom, could not 
understand it. He had never learned this great 



32(3 RATIONAL RELIGION. 

lesson in Christian ethics. With consummate 
adroitness Jesus led him along step by step 
through the maze of his self-righteousness until 
he prepared his mind for the fundamental doc- 
trine of faith, without which, with however much 
of outside legal religion, it is impossible to please 
God, or experience the new birth. " As Moses 
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so 
must the Son of Man " — the living embodiment 
of all law, who is "the way, the truth and the 
life, be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him. 
should not perish but should have eternal life." 
But Jesus never belabored the inquiring sinner 
with the mysteries of the new birth. When Zac- 
cheus, the publican, conscious of his guilt and 
anxious for his soul, climbed up into a tree to see 
Jesus over the heads of the people that thronged 
him. Jesus did not say to him. "ye must be 
born again." but ordered him to " come down for 
this day I must abide at thy house." So he went 
home with Zaccheus to accept his hospitality and 
to reason with him to ' ; do justly, to love mercy, 
and to walk humbly with God," while the Phari- 
sees pointed at him the finger of scorn saying, 



RATIONAL RELIGION, o27 

"he eateth with publicans and sinners." But 
Zaccbieus was born again, probably without ever 
having heard a word of the theorem of the new 
birth. For he said, " behold Lord, I give half 
my goods to the poor, and if I have wronged any 
man by false accusation, I restore him four fold." 

He did not tell the harlot, whom the people 
were about to stone to death, " ye must be born 
again." He told her to '' go and sin no more." 

And that is the way to preach the gospel. The 
way the Prophets, the Apostles, and Christ him- 
self preached. And the Church, after wrangling 
for centuries over doctrines and dogmas, and 
creeds, after subdividing itself up into rival fac- 
tions, and warring parties, a spectacle over which 
angels weep and devils rejoice, is learning in this 
latter day of progress, to stack their arms as de- 
nominational sects, to furl their banners written 
all over with obsolete and contradictory symbols, 
and spread to the breeze the banner of the cross 
bearing the golden rule of the " Prince of Peace," 
in letters of living light, and under this glorious 
ensign to martial Christian hearts out of all sects, 
ranks and parties of the people, in battalions of 



328 RATIONAL RELIGION". 

divers Christian organizations. The Y. M. C. A's., 
the Y. W. C. A's., the Y. P. S. C. E's., the Epworth 
Leagues, and many other forms of Christian ac- 
tion, into which young men and maidens, boys 
and girls, fathers and mothers, enter without 
shiboleth, password or regalia to " fight the good 
fight of faith, and lay hold on eternal life," coun- 
selling all of every age to break off their sins by 
righteousness and their iniquities, by showing 
mercy to the poor, as saith the Prophet Daniel. 
That's the only theolog}' of the young men's 
Christian Association and other societies of Chris- 
tian endeavor. It's the only theology of Chris- 
tianity. '" Show mercy to the poor. Love God 
with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself." 
That is righteousness, and whosoever obeys that, 
breaks off his sins, is born of the Spirit, shows 
mercy to the poor in which all divine religion 
culminates. In the day of judgment no mention 
will be made of any other theology. Then we 
shall hear nothing about the new birth, about 
atonement, or trinity, or divine sovereignty, or 
baptism, or apostolic succession. The only ques- 
tion raised will relate to the sole virtue of show- 



RATIONAL RELIGION. 329 

INO MERCY to the poor. The poor will then have 
changed places with the rich, with the aristocracy, 
with the masters and haughty money kings. The 
poor will then he on the hench speaking through 
the lips of " the Son of Man " himself. " I was 
hungry, thirsty, naked, sick in prison, and ye on 
the right hand showed mercy to me. Come ye 
blessed." While ye on the left hand showed me 
no mercy, " depart ye cursed." But did we not 
build the sepulchers of the Prophets; did we not 
build cathedrals and colleges, "and in thy name 
cast out devils, and do many wonderful work." 
This ought ye to have done, and not to have left 
the other undone. Under the very eaves of your 
cathedrals and colleges abide squallor, hunger, 
cold, nakedness, and the extremes of human woe. 
You looked on the victims of poverty and passed 
by on the other side. " Depart from me, I never 
knew you." 

There was one class, and only one to which 
Jesus said, " ye must be born again." To all 
others he preached love to God, and mercy to the 
poor. He said he came not to call the righteous 
but sinners to repentance, and to sinners he said, 



330 RATIONAL RELIGION. 

" go and sin no more." But to the Pharisees, of 
whom Nicodemus was a representative type, ho 
said, "ye must be born again." We never heat 
him inveigling against any other class. He came 
to seek and to save sinners with whom the Phari- 
sees could have no dealings for fear of contango* 
nation. But the Pharisees, Scribes and Doctors 
were so righteous, so very orthodox, religiously 
precise and socially exclusive, that they were ab- 
solutely outside of the pale of his grace. He 
could do nothing for them without that radical 
supernatural reconstruction of moral character 
which he designates the new birth. So dead were 
they to the elementary virtue of Christian mor- 
ality, that there seemed to be no terms sufficient- 
ly expressive by which to indicate his holy in- 
dignation. 

" But woe unto you. Scribes and Pharisees, 
hypocrites, for ye shut up the kingdom of Heaven 
against men; for ye neither go in yourselves, 
neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. 

"Woe unto you. Scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
crites, for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, 
which indeed appear beautiful outward, but arc 



RATIONAL RELIGION, 33] 

within full of dead men's bones, and of all un- 
cleanness, 

" Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous 
unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and 
iniquity." 

Such were the men to whom Jesus announced 
the doctrine of the new birth. To publicans and 
harlots, and self-convicted sinners, he opened the 
way to the new life without any mysticism. "Go 
and sin no more," and ye shall ha*ve treasure in 
Heaven. But the Pharisees, the sanctimonious 
religionists, they must be born again. 

Well, the Pharisees are not all dead yet, and 
hence the doctrine of the new birth is not obso- 
lete, 

The subdivision of the church universal into 
separate organizations adapted to the traditional 
modes of thought and action of different nation- 
alities and civilization^, is as natural and as use- 
ful as the subdivisions of military or of educa- 
tional methods. That is one thing, while secta- 
rianism, which holds everything subordinate to 
the numerical strength of our church, and to the 
predominance of our creed and our forms of wor- 



832 RATIONAL RELIGION. 

ship, is quite another thing. There may be more 
Pharisees in some sects than in others. In all 
the churches there are undoubtedly some as ob- 
noxious to reproach as those whom Jesus de- 
nounced, ; ' who neither enter the kingdom of 
Heaven themselves, nor suffer those that are en- 
tering to go in." What is it that keeps so many 
good people out of the church — people of con- 
scientious respect for the truth as it is in Jesus — • 
whose moral character no stain of dishonor ever 
defiled, and if in the church, would religiously 
avoid every act that could by any means dis- 
honor a Christian profession? 

All such people outside of the church would 
not render the same reason for withholding their 
names from its roll. But it is safe to say, that if 
in the policy of all the sects, they could see noth- 
ing but an honest purpose to " break off their sins 
by righteousness, and their iniquities by showing 
mercy to the poor," that the majority of good 
men would not. as now. be outside the pale of the 
church. Thomas Jefferson in his lifetime, was 
counted an infidel, and orthodox writers classed 
him as such in history, But this is the testimony 



RATIONAL RELIGION. 333 

which, with his own hand he put on record: "1 
consider the doctrines of Jesus as delivered by 
himself, to contain the outlines of the sublimest 
system of morality that has ever been taught; 
but I hold in the most profound detestation and 
execration, the corruptions of it which have been 
invented by priestcraft, and established by king- 
craft, constituting a conspiracy of church and 
State against the civil and religious liberties of 
mankind." It was not the doctrines of Christ 
that repelled Jefferson from the church, but the 
iniquity of the Pharisees, which put in his mouth 
the reproaches of John the Baptist, who de- 
nounced them as a generation of vipers. And so 
long as the church continues to house Pharisees, 
who, blind to the real and only true end of reli- 
gion, carry on schemes of propagandism for per- 
sonal grandeur and sectarian glory, no marvel if 
good men withhold time, talent and money from 
its support. 

A thousand million of the human family are 
dragging out a forlorn and hopeless existence for 
lack of the bread of God that giveth life unto the 
world. Jesus Christ commissioned his disciples 



334 RATIONAL RELIGION. 

to go into all the world and say to the victims of 
moral depravity, suffering the bitter consequences 
of their own sins, " come, now, let us reason to- 
gether. Break off your sins by righteousness, 
and your iniquities by turning unto the Lord, 
though they be as scarlet, they shall be white as 
snow, and though they be red like crimson, shall 
be as wool." 

How pitiable the poverty of the church's pre- 
tensions that wastes its time and its golden op- 
portunity to show mercy to the poor with years 
of fruitless labor to revise an obsolete creed 
which bears no more relation than the Talmud 
to the moral amelioration of mankind; and in 
the institution of heresy trials against her best 
and wisest men because of their search after new 
and more rational interpretations of the divine 
word. 

But heresy trials are no new thing. The class 
to which Jesus said, " ye must be born again," 
were the original inventors of heresy trials, and 
Jesus himself was the first victim of their law- 
less clamor, "away with him, crucify him." 
Their progency have been in the church ever 



RATIONAL RELIGION. 335 

since giving validity to inquisitions, to persecu- 
tions, to the fires of the stake, to the cruelties of 
the scaffold, and in later times to ostracism and 
ecclesiastical tyranny. And except the men of 
this class be horn again, be new created in all the 
spirit and temper of their minds, they cannot see 
the kingdom of God, but will continue to be a 
stone of stumbling and rock of offense in the way 
of those that would enter therein, and a hin- 
drance to the car of religious progress laden with 
light and salvation for the perishing sons and 
daughters of woe everywhere. 

The late Dr. Bnshnel of the Congregational 
Church, one of the purest men of New England, 
and as a theological scholar and writer without 
a rival, and the eminent Dr. Briggs of the Pres- 
byterian Church, are representative victims of 
heresy trials, and of pharisaic intolerance in our 
own time, in whose experience we can read the 
tribulation of hundreds of humbler and loss noto- 
rious, but clear headed and conscientious preach- 
ers, who for the sin of searching after truth as for 
hid treasure between the lines of the Bible under 
the guidance of reason, have suffered less of 



336 RATIONAL RELIGION. 

standing and usefulness at the hands of a class 
of men in the church who always turn a deaf ear 
when the appeal is made, " come, now, let us rea- 
son together," and persist in cramming down the 
throats of the people theologic dogmas at which 
all the instincts of the rational soul revolt, and 
which the Bible spiritually discerned contradicts. 
This is what keeps good men out of the church 
and hinders the reign of truth and righteousness 
in the earth more than all the crimes of depraved 
men, and the sophistries of infidel writers com- 
bined, 



